Welcome to My World

  • October 22, 2014

As a follow-up to my earlier (Almost) Wordless Wednesday post about mental health field, here is a collection of best moments from “my world”. Even though I do not work in inpatient psychiatry, I often visit the unit to see a particular patient, and I get my own share of these moments working in triage and outpatient setting, plus I worked in inpatient medicine for several years so most of it is very relevant.

*Important Disclaimer: It is in no way my intention to bring offence to anyone with this post. I love my job and even the most difficult patients teach me something new and important. This is just simply a collection of some of those moments unique to work in mental health that I think my fellow comrades in the field can appreciate and relate to. If you are unable to read it with a measure of humor, then this post may not be for you.

#12 – me, every, single, day!  #13 – I don’t get angry anymore, but my BS-radar is always on. And #10 – F*** You is just a hello in my world.

 

Best Moments of a Mental Heath Worker (from Glitter and Goop blogpost):

1. Reading the report on an admission you are about to get.
2. Trying to explain to other people exactly what it is you do at work.
3. Those days when you are emotionally drained and have nothing much to give…
4…and the feeling you get when you’ve actually successfully helped a patient through a crisis situation.
5. Every time you interact with a severely personality disordered patient.
6. The look on your face when you get to work and discover the most horrible patient has been DISCHARGED!!
7. Coming back to work the day after a double shift.
8. Arriving at work and knowing that no matter what goes down, the shift will rock because you are working with amazing people!
9. When you have a patient who is out of control and the doctor orders a medication that won’t even touch them.
10. When a patient is being verbally abusive and you come back with the perfectly witty yet professional response.
11. Accidentally making eye contact with that ONE patient who is constantly asking for something and won’t leave you alone.
12. Trying to follow a delusional or psychotic patient’s long and incoherent story.
13. The anger you feel when you KNOW a person is malingering!
14. Charting, charting and more charting…
15. Charting when your brain is fried at the end of the shift.
16. When you have literally been so busy that you have held your bladder for hours.
17. ANYTIME you have to deal with a naked patient in mental heath, its gonna be an awkward situation.
18. When you have to start something long and involved right before your shift is about to end.
19. Seeing the next shift’s crew coming through the door!
20. You go through so much weird shit together that you can’t help but form incredibly strange but close bonds with your coworkers. Those bonds are important because they make a strange job even more entertaining.
21. They don’t judge you when you tell them that this is how you spent your time after work:
22. Most importantly, they support you because they know exactly how you feel and those people care in a way that only mental health workers do!