Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital

[PokerAmateur4]

Gimme some more

[Exitonly]

Awesome stories by all, please keep them coming.

[TonyG_]

yes, this thread is great. dont stop!

[Hoopster81]

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Awesome stories by all, please keep them coming.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Hoopster81]

What''s it like to have your brain split in half?

[w_alloy]

I have been reading this thread from the start, good stories all around, keep them coming op and others.

[En Passant]

Tell us about drinking on the job.

Also, have you ever yelled at someone or became physically violent towards a patient?

How much money did you make?

[kutuz_off]

How do "normal" people react when you tell them these stories? Are there crazy chicks that find all this attractive?

[jackflashdrive]

OK well I thought this thread was exhausted but there is still some interest so I'll keep going.

If you asked a question that I somehow missed please don't take it personally and please do ask the question again.

A few people asked about drinking on the job and I have two stories regarding this.

First, I would never normally drink on the job because it would be dangerous for staff and patients and there might be legal ramifications beyond the obvious problem of gettting fired. However, on my last night working the other tech who was working with me -- a girl of about the same age as me (24yo at the time) -- brought a bottle of apple schnapps into work so we could celebrate. We kept the bottle in the staff bathroom and took bathroom breaks quite regularly. We finished the bottle in about 4 hours and let me tell you that apple schnapps gets pretty gross after the third or fourth shot and produces quite the hangover. All the patients cooperate with our scheme, sleeping peacefully through the night, and we were able to control our behavior when day shift arrived.

We could do this because the nurse who worked with us that night was himself a raving alcoholic. He was in fact fired a few months later for drinking on the job. This nurse "Tom" was a really cool guy. He was a former cop who was fired for some unspecified offense (probably alcohol related) and then went to nursing school. Whenever he worked we had free reign to do whatever we wanted -- he slept in the medroom for a good 6 hours of his shift each night and his breath always stank of alcohol when he showed up for work. The other nurses knew about his drinking and I knew it was just a matter of time before someone ratted him out.

[jackflashdrive]

From swingdocs story:

[ QUOTE ]
Being the good student, I ask about special powers or missions. Apparently he has been contracted to meet with Saddam Hussein and pay him $1 million and if he does not, then a nuclear sub will sail to kansas and nuke KC. Honestly I'm a little baffled by this and having some small trouble not smiling.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a story that might make me seem cold or unempathetic, but I'd ask you to remember where the expression 'gallows humor' comes from, and also my earlier point about it being human nature to distance yourself from the patients.

So there was a woman "Jane" who really didn't belong on a psych unit, as she seemed to be simply retarded (er, I mean that literally). She was about 55yo and had the state of mind of a 10yo. I think she said something to the effect of 'I am going to kill myself' but I really don't think she was even remotely suicidal.

So one night she wakes up screaming because she has had a nightmare and she is waking up the whole unit. This is bad because it is hard enough getting some people to sleep -- sometimes the only reason they go to sleep to begin with is that they got drugs right before bed and when they are up they are up. So we are asking her to quiet down and after about 5 minutes we aren't getting anywhere -- she just won't shut up and now in addition we are having to deal with other people freaking out. So the nurse says let's put her in seclusion.

This woman was very overweight -- probably weighed 250 or so and she was relatively short. So we tell her she is going to the back and she starts screaming even louder. Typically the way you walk someone to seclusion is that one person takes each arm and with one hand you pull the arm back at the wrist and with the other you press your hand forward on the patient's shoulder. So we try to do this and she resists by simply laying on the floor and not moving. If we had more people we could try to carry her, but this is night shift so it is just me and the other tech and a nurse who weighs like 100 pounds.

So the nurse says she has an idea. We put a bed sheet on the floor and roll her onto it and wrap her in it so she can't get out, and the idea is that we are going to drag Jane back to seclusion in this sheet. So we start doing this and Jane is really screaming her head off and then all of a sudden Jane starts farting violently. The other tech and I try to ignore this at first but we are looking at each other smirking and then all of a sudden one of us starts cracking up and pretty soon we are both laughing hysterically. I mean we are laughing so hard that we can barely walk, let alone keep pulling her. The nurse is yelling at us to stop laughing but even she can barely keep it together. Eventually we get her in the seclusion room and we are wiping tears of laughter from our eyes for an hour as Jane sobs in the background.