2nd & 3rd Day, 2nd Week - MH Placement
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Tuesday was an interesting one, as we had a lady who does have depression - there is no doubt about that, but she is also an attention seeker. How do we know this?? Because she would target Staff members, walk up to them and drop onto the floor in front of them - sometimes grabbing them on the way. She had done it at least four times, two of which to my preceptor, and then once I was walking along behind her and she looked behind, saw me there and started staggering down the hall as though about to fall. Then she did manage to fall down in front of the other student and was then unceremoniously hauled off to her bedroom by two nurses either side of her, holding her in a 'special' grip. She tried to lift her legs and fall again, while they had her in this hold, and a third nurse grabbed the top of her shorts from behind and basically gave her a wedgie all the way back to her room through holding her up by her shorts. That was the last time she did it on that shift. The next shift, she tried falling again in the hallway, and the nurses just left her on the floor and told her to get up when she was ready - she did. We would have done that, but for us, she always chose to fall in the doorway of the office and block the doorway with her body.
So most of Tuesday was spent dealing with that.
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Wednesday, we had a couple of new admissions. One was an older male who thinks he has done something 13years ago which he is going to be murdered for soon. Because of this, he is very distrusting of all staff. This means he could potentially be dangerous if he feels his life is threatened by a staff member or visitor who (he may perceive to ) look at him differently. The other side of the coin, is that he seems to think he deserves this impending murder, so he is resigned to it. Now, some may argue that he may have actually committed this crime, and any parents of daughters may think he deserves to die if he did, but so far we have no proof he has done anything wrong. He also has a very long history of schizophrenia, and has been off his medication for some time, so the doctors want to wait until his thinking is clearer with medication before tackling this possible crime he may have committed.
Another admission was a male, around 30 with severe depression. This man just can not function, and my heart went out to his wife - who has just seen the man she loves plummet to monosyllable conversation, absolutely no smiles/laughter of any kind, not eating, and completely dependant on her to be told to even get out of bed in the morning. She is trying so hard to be supportive, but she also can't understand what has happened to this man. He used to play sports also, but now he barely gets dressed in the day and isn't the slightest bit interested in things he used to love. Now that is a textbook case of depression. I had seen it in previous hospital admissions for medical reasons, but this was the first time I have seen someone in such a state that I am positive his suicidal risk would have been rated as 'very high' (once his anti-depressants kick in, as he probably can't be bothered even with suicide right now).
A couple of admissions takes up a lot of the shift and we did have a third who believes in conspiracy theories and that we are all trying to poison him and the government has cameras in all buildings in every nook and cranny. He was interesting, but even the psychologist says he is plain mad!!
That was Wednesday - an interesting, sad and different shift.
~
Tuesday was an interesting one, as we had a lady who does have depression - there is no doubt about that, but she is also an attention seeker. How do we know this?? Because she would target Staff members, walk up to them and drop onto the floor in front of them - sometimes grabbing them on the way. She had done it at least four times, two of which to my preceptor, and then once I was walking along behind her and she looked behind, saw me there and started staggering down the hall as though about to fall. Then she did manage to fall down in front of the other student and was then unceremoniously hauled off to her bedroom by two nurses either side of her, holding her in a 'special' grip. She tried to lift her legs and fall again, while they had her in this hold, and a third nurse grabbed the top of her shorts from behind and basically gave her a wedgie all the way back to her room through holding her up by her shorts. That was the last time she did it on that shift. The next shift, she tried falling again in the hallway, and the nurses just left her on the floor and told her to get up when she was ready - she did. We would have done that, but for us, she always chose to fall in the doorway of the office and block the doorway with her body.
So most of Tuesday was spent dealing with that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wednesday, we had a couple of new admissions. One was an older male who thinks he has done something 13years ago which he is going to be murdered for soon. Because of this, he is very distrusting of all staff. This means he could potentially be dangerous if he feels his life is threatened by a staff member or visitor who (he may perceive to ) look at him differently. The other side of the coin, is that he seems to think he deserves this impending murder, so he is resigned to it. Now, some may argue that he may have actually committed this crime, and any parents of daughters may think he deserves to die if he did, but so far we have no proof he has done anything wrong. He also has a very long history of schizophrenia, and has been off his medication for some time, so the doctors want to wait until his thinking is clearer with medication before tackling this possible crime he may have committed.
Another admission was a male, around 30 with severe depression. This man just can not function, and my heart went out to his wife - who has just seen the man she loves plummet to monosyllable conversation, absolutely no smiles/laughter of any kind, not eating, and completely dependant on her to be told to even get out of bed in the morning. She is trying so hard to be supportive, but she also can't understand what has happened to this man. He used to play sports also, but now he barely gets dressed in the day and isn't the slightest bit interested in things he used to love. Now that is a textbook case of depression. I had seen it in previous hospital admissions for medical reasons, but this was the first time I have seen someone in such a state that I am positive his suicidal risk would have been rated as 'very high' (once his anti-depressants kick in, as he probably can't be bothered even with suicide right now).
A couple of admissions takes up a lot of the shift and we did have a third who believes in conspiracy theories and that we are all trying to poison him and the government has cameras in all buildings in every nook and cranny. He was interesting, but even the psychologist says he is plain mad!!
That was Wednesday - an interesting, sad and different shift.
~
posted by Ra'Phil | 5:56 am
1 Comments:
Wow, a real gamut of admissions and cases for you to deal with, isn't there? Interesting to hear about them honestly. Please take care as you never know who's dangerous. Good luck on the rest of the week! Then study time :P Good luck on that!
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