- Job Adverts
- Cynics Guide: Psychiatric Hotline Protocol
- Define My Madness ?
- You Don’t Have To Be Mad, But It Helps
- Better Than Butlins ?
- Stop In The Name Of My Law !
- Sectioning Detrimental To Self Esteem
- Avoiding Becoming A Patient
- Cynics Guide: Staff Retention (Part 1)
- [Cynic's Guide: How To Blog]
- Major And Minor Psychoneurotics
- Cynic’s Guide: Not Taught At University
- You know you’re an RMN when…
- A Glossary of terms
- Cynic’s Guide: How To Be An Antipsychiatrist
- The Devil’s Dictionary (Mental Nurse Edition)
- Students Guide to Acute Inpatient Wards
- ABC: A to C
- ABC: D to F
- ABC: G to I
If you’re like me, you’re probably used to received lots of e-mails with the subject heading “Fw: Fwd: Fw: TOO FUNNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” most of which are about as hilarious as Clostridium difficile (thanks for those e-mails, Mum!)
One of the recurring themes in these e-mails is “You know you’re [blank] when…” This got me thinking, what would a list of “You know you’re an RMN when…” look like? Let’s create that list, so that we can then e-mail it to everyone we know, and our friends will curse us for cluttering up their inbox and wish a slow, painful death upon us. Fun, eh?
A few from me to get the ball rolling:
You know you’re an RMN when…
You start to think of an 8 and a half hour shift as being a “short day”.
You’re unable to walk across your house without writing a care plan on how you should do it.
At the end of a tough shift, you head off to “de-escalate with PRN vodka.”
Every time you change your clothes you find yourself emptying latex gloves, universal containers and those plastic tags they use to close clinical waste bags out of your pockets.
Your definition of “in a minute” can be stretched to ten minutes, half an hour or even not at all.
You come off shift and get drunk…at 8.30am.
you can not tell the difference between your work colleagues and a group of psychiatric patients.
(no offence intended to psych patients being compared to nurses
Why do you think the trust makes us wear ID badges?
Usually I get those “hilarious” emails with the added message “This will really appeal to your sense of humour Mo”… ffs.
Anyway, here’s my contribution…
You know you’re an RMN when you can identify different causes of diarrhoea simply by by the smell of it.
or
You know you’re an RMN when eating crisps out of a clean sick-bowl is perfectly normal.
You know you’re an RMN when you start diagnosing personality disorder in everyone who’s ever pissed you off.
When you get rid of all ties and fret that hanging lights and other fittings in your home look like ligature points.
When you think of taking your kids to a football match but risk assess the trip as too hazardous.
………..when you tell your spouse you can’t offer any help because “it’s against policy”.
When you are edgy around the police, not because of the bodies under the patio, but because you think they might be trying to bring in another section 136 patient.
When you use the ward alcometer to check yourself “just in case” on the early shift after your stressful late shift the day before.
…when you hear about someone being murdered by a “mental patient” on the news and breathe a sigh of relief when you find out it wasn’t one of yours.
At the scene of an accident you find yourself explaining “No, I’m not a proper nurse, but I can talk you through the post traumatic stress”.
Last time I was at an accident I said, “Can I help? I’m a nurse.” Immediately everyone was shouting “Let him through, he’s a nurse!” I didn’t have the heart to tell them I didn’t know much more first aid than the average St Johns Ambulance volunteer.
Fortunately it was just some guy who’d collapsed drunk at a rock festival, so I just made sure his airway was clear, arranged him in some approximation of the recovery position (not difficult, as he’d pretty much fallen into that sort of position), checked his resps and pulse and then tried to look as professional as I could until some real medics arrived.
When I was a CPN (note those letters date me as a dinosaur) I was on a trip with a consuktant psychiatrist and the senior nurse to assess a patient that was held in a private secure hospital. Stopping in the services we approached the entrance were a group of people huddled arround a man lying on the ground. We naturally walked straight past then guilt got the better of us and we turned to give assistance. “Can we help” said the senior nurse, “we’re two nurses and a doctor.” Just as Z decsribed the crowd parted like the red sea. At the scene there was already a man crouching over the injured chap – “he’s got signs of cerebral irritation, dilated pupils, cyanosis and tremor. His pulse is fast and thready but his resps are fairly stable. I’d say his GCS is also stable but low; would you like to take over?” he said. “No thanks” said the psychiatrist, “you seem to have it under control, we’ll be inside if you need us”.
You know you’re an RMN when
you get into a lift with your kids and ask them – “Are we going up, or is the building coming down?”.
you use an “eclectic” nursing model.
you play Judas Priest backwards just to see if it really does say “Kill yourself, kill yourself”
you can’t wait for the first year students to start, just for the laugh.
You know you’re an RMN when you discover you’ve collected almost the entire BNF in free drug company pens
You know you’re an RMN when you’ve become immune to the old “put some apple juice in a universal container, take a swig in front of the new member of staff” practical joke.
Oooh, I gots me another one!
You know you’re an RMN when you start saying “plus plus” in ordinary conversation to mean “very”.
Your documentation is in three letter acronyms (TLA) and only uses words of 3 letters.
“Did IR1 for SUI, did HAD and BDI, see BNF (TCA now for BPD) ?for ECT sec 62 MHA”
In everyday speech when someone says, “affect,” you instinctively think “mood.”
Hi All,
Long time reader, first time poster.
In addition to the above, I think you know you’re an RMN when, upon meeting new people outside work, you need to avoid disclosing your occupation in case they unload all their problems, symptoms etc in an overwhelming, continuous fashion. I tell people I’m a Kitchen Porter – no-one ever asks me about problems with Hobart dishwashers!
Also, YKYARMN when people start telling you about their dreams in vivid detail. Deal with these by quoting Pauline Mole (Adrian’s mum) ” There’s only one thing more deathly boring than hearing about people’s dreams, and that’s listening to people’s problems.”
You know you’re an RMN when ‘the little blue pill’ is not Viagra.
You know you’re an RMN when you start a 7am shift by cramming a mouthful of Extra Strong Mints into your mouth to hide the sins of the previous night.
*is doing an early shift tomorrow*
*hic*
You know you’re an RMN when sleep deprivation is not a temporary state, but a way of life.
Perhaps not generic RMN work, but as part of custodial/secure nursing…
I’ve tried opening my car and house door with my electronic swipe card.
You know you’re an RMN when all your friends ask you to explain their parents medication to them and you have to lie because you don’t have the heart to tell them exactly what Lithium / Haloperidol is for
You know you’re an RMN when the jammy dodgers look like they’ve just made a suicide attempt
NOOOOO, DON’T HURT THE JAMMY DODGERS!!!!!!!!
You know you’re an RMN when you’ve seriously thought about bringing home pschotropic medication for your partner or kids!
Or should that read that you actually have?
or
You’ve seriously thought about forgetting the medication round and just helping youself from the trolley instead?
you know ur an RMN when – you’re doing a mini mental state examination and realise you don’t know half the answers yourself.
you know the number of every takeaway and delivery place near your house (and the guys name that takes the order!)
You’ve restrained someone and it wasn’t a sexual act
you know when you’re an RMN when you inwardly laugh at your patients ‘problems’
you’ve referred to a suicide attempt as an FTF (failure to fly)
you’ve referred to an RGN as a ‘band-aid bunny’
half of your clothes have bloodstains on them
offering a patient a pack of ciggies can bring them out of a fit
[...] series. November saw the a whole new post to decorate the toilet wall in OSB’s ward; You know you’re an RMN when…. Also in November Mr Ian became a regular contributer starting with Classic one liners…. December [...]