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Q53: What is it like to work at a psychiatric hospital?

by: Bianca N. Diesel

I'm a nurse and I worked at a psychiatric hospital for years and years. I worked on a forensic unit which meant that all of my patients had been accused of committing a crime. MOST of my patients had committed violent crimes. Murder, rape, assault, etc.

No one who works there ever really thinks they're doing an exceptional job. There's no cure for those patients. All we could do was medicate them and keep them from killing each other.

Each day we'd walk through the sprawling single storied hospital to our respective units. We'd pass patients walking through the halls with their escorts. The patients were never allowed to walk through the hospitals connecting hallways without having some kind of staff with them. There were 2 locked doors between each unit and exit.

Some units, the ones with patients who were lesser restricted, had pool tables and nicer furniture. My unit wasn't one of those units. We had a ping pong table that'd been thrown through the unit more times than I could count. When I first started there our furniture was made out of wood and leather but the patients used them as weapons frequently and after they'd destroyed them they'd sneak pieces of the sharp wood into their rooms to use as weapons later. Contraband checks were frequent. When I left they'd changed the furniture to heavy duty plastic stools and tables.

Our contraband checks were meant to find any weapons, hooch, hidden snacks, hidden pills, etc. Sometimes we'd find something incredibly gross like cups with poop in them and bottles filled with urine.

When entering my unit you'd walk down a long hallway with patient rooms on either side. The first room was a single room that had a bed with restraints attached to it. We were considered a restraint free facility and only to use that room in an extreme emergency. Calling ourselves restraint free made the upper people feel better. We used our restraints a few times a week. My patients fought a lot. Usually, the aggressor would receive emergency shots and be restrained for about an hour until the meds had taken affect and they were calm.

I had 2 med passes there. I'd go back to my med room, fill each patients drawer with the meds that they were to take that evening and then pull my cart out, still behind the nurses station, and have them line up. My med pass would take about 10 whole minutes.

The patients were allowed to refuse their meds. Most didn't. It was the new admits that didn't want to take their meds frequently. It wasn't unusual for them to refuse their meds for a month or so before some of them got court ordered meds. And regardless of if they'd refused their meds every single day I still had to pull them and offer them.

Things always turned ugly when I got the orders for court ordered meds. They'd refused for a long time by then and thought they'd won the battle. If they refused their PO meds (PO-by mouth) then I'd have to draw up injections for them. The campus police would be called and they'd be held down so I could give the injections. I've seen some crazy shit happen due to court ordered meds.

We had Ohio State Patrol inside the hospital at all times. We probably had 4-6 of them on duty during our shift. Our police officers were terrific. They could talk our patients out of anything. That badge was made out of magic dust for most of our patients.

I spent a lot of time playing cards with my patients. I didn't have to. The other staff members on my unit would sit behind the nurses station the entire shift, protected from everything. We usually played spades or bid whist.

Having worked on that unit for so long changed me. I cannot tolerate being in public places with a bunch of people walking around. No one is allowed to be behind me. I'm vigilant about knowing what's going on in my surroundings. I refuse to be manipulated and sometimes my train of thought can make the most innocent of souls look like a rapist or murderer.