Psychiatric Nurse Reflection

This week in clinical we were working with the nurses on the psychiatric unit. Our task was to learn how they prioritize patients. Since they have five clients with varying needs, the nurses need to be adept at figuring out who needs the most care at any given moment. Personally, I wanted to learn how the nurses talked with challenging patients. By challenging, I mean aggravated clients or clients that have thought process problems such as tangentiality or mutism. Psychiatric nurses are comfortable with clients that I would find challenging because they work with these clients every day. I wanted to observe and learn any tricks that they used to help with communication and setting boundaries. A problem I encountered at the beginning was getting …show more content…
But at the same time, I also felt inspired. With many of our patients, they had certain behavioral problems. Most often the patients would resort to curse words or say something inappropriate. In that split second after hearing it, I didn’t know what I would say. But, it seemed like my nurse always knew what to do. She would tell the clients no when they cursed and tell them to use different words. She would allow the ones with grandiose delusions and circumstantial thought processes to speak and then redirect them with simple questions. It was inspiring to see how she kept each patient calm and made them feel understood. It made me more motivated to really understand where each patient was coming from. It also helped with my uncertainty. I would think about what I could do if that situation was occurring with one of my patients after interacting with a client. When thinking about it, I could easily see what I would do in that situation. Just by reflecting on the situation, it helped me feel more confident that I would be able to react instantly and appropriately if my patients were acting in a similar …show more content…
I did learn many things from my nurse. By watching her, I was able to learn more about effective communication. She was well versed in making the patients feel comfortable but also being strict when it was called for. I think that I could have tried to gain more from the experience, however. She is obviously very knowledgeable about the patients and what it is like for them to have a mental illness. I could have asked her more about her experiences and the medications that she was giving to the patients. While I think that I learn better while being hands on with the clients, I can see the importance of watching how someone else interacts with them. I think it was important for me to watch her because now I know what specific things I need to do to become a better