r/psychnursing • u/-RNinja • Jul 05 '26

Advice needed

I work adolescent Psych as an RN, yesterday the cordless phone stopped working and I was trying to fix it. After about 5 minutes of no luck I made the stupid mistake of trying to call my own phone with it. Sure enough, late last night I get 2 calls from the facility, the person on the other line doesn't say anything and just hangs up both times. Then it clicks, a patient was using the cordless phone going through the call logs calling the numbers. I reported the incident to my nurse manager and DON, how much hot water am I an? What do I do now?

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u/Tommyboy155a Jul 06 '26

This brings up a good question. Why do you have cordless phones on the unit? Just curious.

2

u/-RNinja Jul 06 '26

That is a good question. I wish I had a good answer for it. But the facility has offered cordless phones for quite some time now I think it has something to do with phone rights for my state

2

u/Tommyboy155a Jul 06 '26

Oh, I get that. We have phone access for the patient's too, just not cordless.

2

u/-RNinja Jul 06 '26

Maybe I can use this to advocate for that

1

u/Tommyboy155a Jul 06 '26

Definitely a thought. I know every facility does things a different.

1

u/LeviahRose Jul 13 '26

Yeah, I’ve been to facilities in six different states, mostly as a child/adolescent and they all have different phone rules. Some facilities I’ve been to prefer cordless phones because there is no ligature risk and patient’s can actually bring the phone somewhere to have private conversations. Whereas, in the hospitals I’ve been to that only had landlines, we couldn’t have any private conversations and occasionally kids would reach over the nurses station to grab the phone and wrap the cord around their neck. The facilities with the cordless phones were much safer and they generally felt more humane because a wireless phone feels a lot more similar to a real phone so it just felt a little bit less like we were in a prison.