Dignity Is Up To You

Mental Health

Clinical

I have a hypothetical scenario for you to ponder. One day it’s possible you will have two patients on your floor- one who is fighting to stay alive because of a physical illness and one who is fighting to stay alive because of the demons in her head.

Both patients might have families. Both families might look harried and scared. The family of the patient who is physically sick will talk openly with the nurses and be consoled by them. This family will have no qualms about talking with the nurses in the hallways or at the nurses’ station. The nurses will hug them and express sympathy. But the other family, the family of the patient on suicide precautions, will talk only in hushed tones in a darkened room. The nurses will not know how to react. The nurses will not know how to comfort.

Mental illness is treated differently in society than physical illness. Even now when we know so much about its causes. Even when we know that it is not something that someone can ‘snap out of’ if they would just try hard enough. As a nurse it would never cross your mind  to think that your patient just needed to try a little harder to overcome their physical illness.  You would never think things like, “Well, what is she doing being sick? She has so much to live for. I just can’t understand it.” Or, “Gee, maybe she should just stop thinking about being sick, it would be fine. Why is she so weak?” It will almost definitely cross your mind to think similar things about your psychiatric patient.

As a nurse you might see that the patient with the physical illness has love and support from many people. Her room is filled with visitors and balloons proclaiming “Get Well Soon”. The patient with mental illness will have no visitors. Friends may have run a long time ago, family might be weary of dealing with the situation. There will be no flowers or balloons.

So you might see all this. The question becomes what are you going to DO about it? How are you going to talk to your fellow students and later to your coworkers?

Your mental health rotation is the place to begin to learn empathy for psychiatric patients. To realize they deserve dignity and support. Going to the AA meeting is an inconvenience for you. An annoyance. Think, though, of the tremendous amount of courage it takes for an alcoholic to walk into that meeting for the first time or to keep going week after week. Think of the amount of courage it takes for someone to admit they need some psychiatric help and to check themselves into a psychiatric hospital.

You will see a lot in your mental health rotation. Your job as a clinical student is to develop you therapeutic communication skills and to learn the symptoms of each illness and to know the side-effects of psychotropic meds. But your job is also, though you may not know it, to develop an approach to dealing with psychiatric patients that preserves their dignity and humanity. You may have no desire to ever be a psych nurse, but you WILL see psych patients in every other facet of nursing.

These should be your primary objectives:

“Treat the patients with dignity and respect at all times. You will never regret it. Try not to be afraid of psychiatry or psychiatric patients, you cannot catch madness. Mental health stigma and prejudice is real and widespread. Make sure you are not part of the problem.”  You have a unique opportunity as a nurse just starting out whose opinions and attitudes are still being formed. How are you going to treat the two patients on your floor in my hypothetical situation?

[http://www.shockmd.com/2011/09/07/tips-when-starting-psychiatry/#sthash.vlBri9Ll.dpuf]