In taking over, I’d like to thank Mental for being the person who built up this online resource, and I hope I can keep it at the current high quality.
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Mental, the original founder and maintaining of this website, has asked me to let it be known that he’s standing down from maintaining it. He’s passed over the maintenance tasks to me.
There’s talk of strike action, from a union that’s so conservative it considers being members of the TUC too radical. Wonders will never cease.
For years I’ve been looking forward to the politicisation of the nursing profession. Read the rest of this entry »
Well the media are having a field day today.
Psychiatric patients causing carnage and incompetent mental health professionals not doing their jobs properly. I’ve no doubt the media have a point and I’ve even less doubt that there is a big debate to be had, but I’d like to briefly turn the spotlight in another direction. I’m very well aware that it is a case of there but for the grace of God go I (I’ve had some very close calls and my heart has been surgically retrieved from my mouth on a number of occasions) but I haven’t lost a patient in my care, nor have any of them ever committed a serious criminal offence. I have, however, experienced the following:
My Godmother spent her working life as a bit of a boffin in the textile industry. She specialised in testing textiles to determine what type of purpose they would lend themselves to. I know, it sounds rather boring, but she had a few amusing anecdotes up her sleeve. You won`t be surprised to hear that most of them highlighted the breathtaking ignorance of the people responsible for NHS linen procurement.
Now I want to know who oversees NHS building development and commissioning. If I were to use the term “built at the turn of the century”, I would imagine your mind would conjur up a magnificent Victorian edifice, still standing tall after a 100 years or more. However, the last two units that I`ve worked in were built at the turn of the LAST century and they`re anything but magnificent.
There I was browsing Boing Boing for my daily dose of oddness. Here is what I found.
Portraits of cans of ashes of 5,000 mental patients’ remains
Last year you ran a story about the cremated remains of 5000 people found in the closet of an Oregon psychiatric hospital …
So I clicked the link.
Cremated remains of 5,000 mental patients discovered in old Oregon sanatorium
Cicolini sez, “Someone was cleaning out an old insane asylum and found the cremated remains of over 5000 people tucked away in a closet. Here are some former patients of the hospital who are trying to tidy up this huge PR mess.”
Many areas of MH nursing require the use of evil. Probably many areas of all nursing but I will write about what I know.
Some of the following is planned to be aggravating & provocative.
First of all a definition of evil from the Compact Oxford English Dictionary:
adjective 1 deeply immoral and malevolent 2 … 3 extremely unpleasant
Number 2 involves the devil, I may return to Nursing and Satan in a later post 
Nurses and patients do this all the time.
They begin with the opposite of whatever they are about to do.
I’m not normally one to ask for tablets but can I have some lorazepam, you know the blue one ?
I don’t normally speak ill of patients but Mr Smith is a nasty piece of work.
And the classic.
I like nurse Smith. But she is a complete cow and useless at her job. If she was here I would say this to her.
Of course this is never said to the person.
This is not what I actually want to write about today. Today the topic is mental health nurse humour.
Sometimes I just want to punch myself in the mouth.
My new job involves a high amount of personal care. Which fairly rapidly becomes the norm.
At the beginning of being a Mental Student I dreaded the thought of person-handling another’s nether regions filled me full of unpleasant fear.
Clarty
Tough NHS hygiene rules proposed
My trust recently was named and shamed in the media for being very unclean. Waste bags being left in the corridors, nurses scratching their bums and not washing their hands, nose-picking and general unpleasantness.
When younger. Before I even became Student Mental Nurse I had a daydream.
I was going to go to nursing college. I was going to learn to be a mental health nurse. It was going to make me a more useful member of society, I would be a better listener to my friends and family. Most of all though I was going to be surrounded by nicer people at college.
I remember listening to patients in the smoking room. There used to be an apparent view that if staff were smoking with you they were not really working or listening at the time.
Clients also seem to forget that staff speak to one another but that is another issue.
There was a widely held opinion that nurses:
- Had never suffered from any mental health problems.
- Therefore could not help them; the patient
This of course is blithering stupidity.
The rule is very very simple. Though it does take some experience and common sense to know how to apply it in some situations.
Here it is, are you ready ?
Never lie to a client.
Very facile.
It used to be quite easy to spot weirdoes when out and about. This was some decades ago.
Weird people used to push around shopping trolleys full of carrier bags. They would stand on street corners, under a bible verse banner, shouting about everyone being an evil sinner. Wearing long and dirty trenchcoats. Liberals and communists ! Twitching, shaking, staring and muttering.
Currently on my first night shift of a batch. Watching Guest House Paradiso, one of the finest movies ever made, hoping nothing bad happens before morning comes.
The meaningless cruelty of the movie occasionally reminds me of scenes seen at work.
Before I begin properly. Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust www.hantspt.nhs.uk have taken out one and a half pages in this weeks mental health practice appointments pages. If the cynic’s guide is anything to go by they are absolutely desperate for any staff as they are seeking D,E and F grades.
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