NursingZen

Week 3 of Psych clinicals, done. It has been enriching, fun, boring, sad, nerve-wracking, and strange, all within a matter of minutes. You never know what you’re going to get.

Going with the flow
One moment my patient answers all my questions with a smile; the next moment he tells me he’s tired of everyone asking him the same damn questions. One moment a man is pacing the halls, pushing at locked Exit doors, and cursing, and another moment he’s having coffee and alternately smiling and frowning as he tells me how he’s going to burn in hell. One moment a man announces that if he doesn’t get discharged today he’ll kill someone; the next moment he’s willing to play Bingo! if he can win a pad of paper on which he can write about his study of Taoism.

Favorite moments

• Coffee hour on the patio brings everyone out, including the motor-mouth schizophrenic, the depressed, the anxious, the angry, and the fast walker. A garrulous bipolar man takes out his classical guitar and strums old tunes. He sings while the others nod along. The fast walker, a paranoid schizophrenic, belts out “America the Beautiful” with his eyes shut tight and his weathered face tilted toward the sun.
• The nurses’ therapeutic interactions. Although we think they’re few and far between, these interactions have stayed with me: the short Papa-Smurf-(sans-blue)-looking nurse, speaking authoritatively to an angry, towering patient; the nearly retired “mother” nurse, hugging and clearly loving the demented man who sits all day staring at and folding newspapers; and the energetic, idealistic young nurse playing guitar and singing to patients when he’s on his lunch break.
• The nurses’ smiles and sometimes inappropriate jokes. Their lightness isn’t hard to get used to, a far cry from the tension of many Med Surg nurses.
• Playing Bingo! with 8 patients, and not giving up on the ones who first balked at the idea.

Difficult moments

• Encountering the manic patient, who is intrusive, hypersexual, and just plain rude. We avoid him while feeling badly for him.
• Reading about or listening to the patients’ past. They’re survivors of broken homes, war, incest, rape, suicide attempts, and unforgiving religious indoctrination. A couple are perpetrators of rape and violence themselves.
• Trying to talk to an old, confused man whose slow responses, blunted affect, and increasingly soft and shapeless features remind me of a loved one.