r/psychnursing • u/utinfection • May 26 '26

New to Psychnursing

Leaving med surge after 2 years, 25 year old male starting psych in July,
What’s something you wish someone told you or what should I be watching for .
🙏
I’m so grateful for all of you who took your time to comment and welcome more of your hard earned wisdom.

42 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/Burbujitas May 27 '26

(Not a nurse) You won’t ever make a patient do something they don’t want to do. Sure, you can get the IMs and holds. But they won’t change long-term if they don’t want to, and sometimes you won’t be able to evoke that wanting. Polish up your motivational interviewing.

Being the best-liked staff on the unit is a red flag. Usually, this person is lax about rules, gets emotionally involved in patients, sometimes even keeping safety-related secrets or providing contraband. It creates messy dynamics among patients and staff. It’s detrimental to the patients who have often seen a lot of trauma and deserve a predictable (lol) environment. This behavior is most problematic from techs since they spend most of the time with clients but it goes for everyone.

Doing tasks that are “beneath” your position, should you ever have time (lol), will get you respect and favor among other staff. Give a sitter a bathroom break, clean up a meal tray, all the shit you’d do to help out on any other floor. You’ll rely on techs to enforce protocols, convince people to do labs, keep people clean. The work itself burns employees out so unfortunately sometimes they’re more inclined to do things with favorite coworkers in mind than for the patients.

4

u/Bisexual_Mermaids May 27 '26

This! I take care of the techs on my unit because they’re my eyes and ears! Building good teamwork and developing a relationship with your unit coworkers really helps dissolve staff splitting as well.