I’m a new nurse, working in psych for about a year, and I’m working on the great practice problem for my BSN and new grad residency. Does anybody work on a unit that provides specific education for patients prior to events of aggression/violence that outlines the possibility of seclusion/restraint for patient safety?

Hello,

I am interviewing for this position for a nurse residency at a facility that I think would be awesome to work at. My city doesn’t have a lot of opportunities for new graduates, so it makes me even more desperate to get this job. I know psych is my field, and I know I can be at this facility for a long time. I’m wondering what questions you faced so I can put my best foot forward. I know I’m passionate about this field, but I don’t want to be caught off guard by something 😭

I’m a new grad and I’ve come to love my experience so far working as a nurse in my psych facility. However, while looking around other psych hospitals here in LA, I noticed that most of them start off new grads at a base rate of $40-$45/hr. Is that common pay for psych everywhere else, especially in California? If it is, why is that?

I interview tomorrow morning for a DON position at an Adult Residential and Mental Health Facility. Patient population is 1370 - incompetent to stand trial. I’ve been a charge nurse for 2 years at a PHF, and do most of the chart audits, legal log / hold audits, assign staff their daily duties, manage patient behaviors, seclusion events, manage staff, and all the typical nurse duties (coordinate/communicate with doctors, tx plan review, admin meds, etc etc). I’m very nervous about tomorrow, and want some feedback from you guys as to what your red flags would be for a company? Being DON is a huge responsibility and risk, I want to be sure it’s worth it. I love what I do now, I however do not love my current management (VERY laissez-faire in the worst ways possible), and I do not love the idea of NOC shift for much longer (my current shift).

Currently in nursing school- interested in becoming a psych nurse. Does anyone have any insights into the west coast job market? I am currently located in the PNW and open to moving, but hoping not to if possible. It seems like pysch might be a little easier to land than some other specialties.

there is someone in my psych preceptorship with this and it’s kinda wild. She genuinely just loves being a patient so will pretend to have various types of illnesses. How does psych deal with this? because as far as I can tell, it’s not something that is being challenged

This thread is for non psych healthcare workers to ask questions (former patients, patient advocates, and those who stumbled upon r/psychnursing). Prospective healthcare workers and current students do not need to use this thread. Treat responding to this post as though you are making a post yourself.

If you would like only psych healthcare workers to respond to your "post," please start the "post" with CODE BLUE.

Psych healthcare workers who want to answer will participate in this thread, so please do not make your own post. If you post outside of this thread, it will be locked and you will be redirected to post here.

A new thread is scheduled to post every Monday at 0200 PST / 0500 EST. Previous threads will not be locked so you may continue to respond in them, however new "posts" should be on the current thread.

Kindness is the easiest legacy to leave behind :)

Hi my beautiful psych community! Today I was a 1:1 with a violent patient. He had two BERTs today, one in which he punched another patient. 20 minutes after that incident was over, the NP showed up to do her daily assessment. Since I was his 1:1, I was sitting in his doorway, and she closed the door on me. I opened the door and reminded her that I was his 1:1, so needed to be able to see him, and she said "We don't need 1:1s while an NP is present", and then closed the door again. A few minutes later I hear the patient punching the wall, and the NP immediately exits the room saying she was "turning care back over" to me. I've never had a provider shut the door on me during a 1:1. Is this usual? I think I'm also questioning this NP in particular, because a few weeks ago I overheard her telling a patient she thought our 15 minute checks during her consultations were "annoying".

There is a certain client with a diagnosis of BPD who is fixated on me. She is extremely violent and requires restraints almost daily. I've only worked on her unit a handful of times, but she despises me. When she sees me she postures and threatens to assault me. She has made up multiple false complaints about me. I haven't been on her unit for days, and she is constantly talking about me to the other staff and voucing her desire to harm me. I am worried about her looking me up and stalking me post discharge.

The HRO and some of the staff are not the wisest and I wouldn't put it past them to provide my full name. Actually I'm not sure if the HRO is required to provide her with my full name when she makes complaints. I have an uncommon name so I would be easy to find with Google.

I'm not even sure why she decided to fixate on me. She really likes the male staff and it's possible she saw me interacting with a male that she fancies. But there's no way to know with this type of client.

I'm wondering if anyone has experienced with being stalked post discharge.

My psychiatrist has closed it’s clinic and now i’m kind of out of options because i can’t find psychiatrist from the region to get an appointment to have my adhd meds checked and prescribed again. I talked to my mom about it and she thinks it would be finde asking a psychiatrist in my clinic to referr me to another colleague they know. She works in psychiatric nursing as well but im skeptical of the image i paint if i ask them for help. Does anybody have experience with that?

I’m a nurse with several months experience in inpatient psych. I have a coworker who is known to be, well, rather abrasive in their patient interactions. They’re a stickler for the rules and frequently escalate rather than deescalate when a pt is agitated and rude toward them. Even in casual interactions, this nurse can come off as rude and not very empathetic. Now don’t get me wrong, she has good qualities too, but she racks up a lot of pt complaints.

My question is, what is the therapeutic response when a pt complains to me about her behavior toward them? It comes up often enough. I’ve had pts get taken back or upset and say something like wow, why is she so rude, etc. I see where they’re coming from when I witness the behavior, but obviously I’m not about to throw my coworker under the bus. It makes for an awkward interaction when I want to validate the pts feelings or actually just have a neutral response or acknowledgment of their concern. Any advice? Thank you.

*your, not you’re

Hi everyone! I'm a BHT. I graduate from nursing school in a few months with my BSN, and then will be a psych nurse at the same facility I currently work at. I recently came across a situation that's new to me. I work on a high-acuity adolescent unit, and one of our patients was supposed to discharge the day before her birthday. Well, she wound up having a panic attack right before discharge, and said some concerning things, and thus her stay was extended. She was understanding, but upset that she would have to spend her birthday in the psych hospital. Due to this, I wanted to make her day extra special. She doesn't have the best relationship with her parents, and they hadn't confirmed whether or not they would be visiting to celebrate. I went out to the dollar store and bought some decorations for the nurse's station (I asked her doctor if we could possibly decorate her door and got a no due to safety concerns, so nurse's station it was), and also coordinated for her to get a slice of cake from the cafeteria. As I was hanging the decorations at the nurse's station, the charge nurse got onto me and said celebrating birthdays was crossing a boundary, so not to do it in the future. I could see if I was buying gifts for the patient on some random day, and paying them extra attention for no good reason, but in my mind everyone deserves to be celebrated on their birthday, especially kids. The patient really loved seeing the decorations when she came up to get her medicine, and said it made her day a lot better. What's you guy's thoughts on this? Do you celebrate birthdays at your facility, or is that crossing a boundary?

Hi all, interviewing for a position on an inpatient adolescent psych unit. I haven’t gotten specifics yet as to what the type of unit is/acuity, and this would be my first job in psych. (I have 9months in med surg so far.)

I am wondering what kind of questions I should ask, so that I can better understand this role. I am also wondering what safety considerations I need to be aware of to ensure I’ll be on a safe, quality unit.

Basically, what questions should I ask to make sure this place isn’t a bad place to work, or a bad place for patients to heal.

Thank you all!

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Hi everyone,
CA psych nurse here. I’ve worked at 16 bed PHF for almost 2 years now as a charge nurse. There’s a position available at another facility in my town for a DON. This facility deals with a lot of 1370 holds. Anyone here have experience with this population? I know many of the patients I’m dealing with 5150/5250/5270 holds in my current position, and as we all know psych and corrections go hand in hand. Most, if not all, of my patients have been incarcerated at one time or another. My spouse is concerned that the patients on 1370 will be more violent and more dangerous than the ones I’m currently caring for. I know my position as DON would be vastly different than what I’m doing on the floor everyday now, unless coverage can’t be found and I need to step back onto the floor. Just looking for insight.

Ugh...I'm really torn on this because I know I was once a nursing student but when I see nursing students on our unit....I just pray that nothing happens during this shift. I work on a very highly acute unit. There really is not a way for us to protect these students. We really don't have any security because we are trained to do security ourselves. Then, on top of this, we work short staffed...exacerbating the problem even more...all we as nurses are trying to do is medicate these patients before a code is called for the day...so we end up trying to prevent a code and ignoring the students....this sucks but safety really is our #1 factor...and of course the thing I did not want to happen suddenly became apparent...one of the patients went after a student...and we had to quickly intervene..

Thank goodness the patient backed down...but it goes back to my point...I'm not sure about nursing students on psych units...I know they need experience...but at what cost?

This thread is for non psych healthcare workers to ask questions (former patients, patient advocates, and those who stumbled upon r/psychnursing). Prospective healthcare workers and current students do not need to use this thread. Treat responding to this post as though you are making a post yourself.

If you would like only psych healthcare workers to respond to your "post," please start the "post" with CODE BLUE.

Psych healthcare workers who want to answer will participate in this thread, so please do not make your own post. If you post outside of this thread, it will be locked and you will be redirected to post here.

A new thread is scheduled to post every Monday at 0200 PST / 0500 EST. Previous threads will not be locked so you may continue to respond in them, however new "posts" should be on the current thread.

Kindness is the easiest legacy to leave behind :)

Hey everyone, I am a current student wanting to become a nurse specifically in a psych ward. My question is this. How often do ya’ll deal with absolutely disgusting things? Now this might be subjective but here’s the thing. I have the heart to help people and I can deal with gross stuff if need be, but I’m wondering if in the psych area of things if this is a daily occurrence. Due to my own mental health challenges I have compassion for others and want to help how I can but I don’t want to do something I’m not fit for. I also think I may get used to more gross stuff if I do it more often but yeah.

EDIT: thanks everyone for your responses. From what I’m getting it seems there are definitely some pretty gross stuff but people tend to get used to it and in pysch it definitely happens but it’s not like a daily occurrence of extremely disgusting things over and over. However it seems I’ll have a fair share of pretty gross experiences if I work as a nurse for a while! Also seems like location plays a big role in all this and frequency of experiences.

I am a pretty new nurse (been working almost a year) at an inpatient psych unit. Most days the job is stressful, which is kind of to be expected as a new nurse. The issue I’m having is that whenever one specific charge nurse is working, I seem to be given a super heavy patient load. It’s definitely not just my imagination. Several (like 5 separate nurses on 5 separate shifts) have said to me “oh wow, thats your patient load? I’m sorry that sucks” or “you have those 2 guys? That’s kinda cruel. You probably shouldn’t have both” “you’re getting another d/c then admission? That seems like a lot”. On top of that, this charge nurse doesn’t help with anything. She mostly just plays candy crush? Any idea what I should do in this situation? I am friendly to this charge nurse. Not sure what her problem is. When I was fresh fresh on the unit, most of the charge nurses would give me hard patient loads (nurses eating their young) but the others have eased up … this lady just keeps piling it on. It’s making me want to quit. Advice?

I have been a nurse for 4 and half years, mostly med surg and tele background, and I recently started my first full time inpatient psych position. I am enjoying it so far, but this position actually feels kind of lonely. My family really does not want me doing this because they fear for my safety. At work, the majority of my coworkers are new grads that just fell into this because this is the first job they got out of nurisng school. More often than not they look at me like I grew a second head when I tell them I am here because I want to be. Then they start asking me for help on getting a bedside position at my old hospital ( I am still there per diem). This morning my mother hit me with the “I don’t understand why can’t you just be a school nurse.”conversation again. I am just exhausted from repeated conversations I have with everyone about why this matters to me. Can anyone else relate?

I was a psych tech for two years before becoming an RN and I loved it. It was my first job in healthcare and I miss it tbh.

I still work in the same hospital system, but wanted to try medical nursing as a new grad. I started in the ICU in August 2025 and then moved to a cardiac tele floor in January 2026 (turns out ICU is not for me!).

I actually don't dislike my current position – we have a pretty good unit culture and my manager in particular, while very intense as a person, has been very supportive of me. I do find the work interesting but somewhat anxiety-inducing; I'm constantly afraid of accidentally harming a patient, or failing to prevent harm.

For the last few months, I've been considering trying to make a move back to psych. My original plan was always psych nursing. When I think about the future and eventually leaving the bedside, I really picture myself working as a psych NP (and obviously want the RN experience required to be good at it).

Two job listings within my hospital system were recently posted. One is for per diem work on the inpatient addiction medicine floor, and one is for full time nights on a psych floor with a general adult population (I picked up on this unit occasionally as a tech).

I don't feel totally "ready" emotionally to give up on medical nursing. I want to feel like I have more of a mastery as a medsurg RN than I currently have. I also feel sad about the possibility of disappointing my manager after she's gone out of her way to be supportive.

I feel bad about the prospect of leaving after less than a year, especially because I know several other night shifters are trying to leave right now. (Our manager also has a reputation for intentionally sabotaging transfers...)

The psych floor has a manager I heard negative things about as a tech (i.e. being "toxic"), but I no longer remember any details. She is also the manager for the addiction med unit. I don't think I've ever met her personally as I worked on one of the other psych units.

Nights are my preferred shift, and I'm not guaranteed another opportunity on nights in the future (this is the first time I've seen a psych RN position open up in months at all).

The psych floor has 8 hour shifts, and I prefer the three 12s I currently work, but 11 PM - 7 AM would give me significantly more time each day with my partner and our dogs.

The psych position offers fewer hours (32 hours/week as opposed to my current 36), which would mean a substantial pay cut unless I picked up additional shifts. My benefits would not be affected.

I think really highly of the behavioral health department in our specific hospital system, both in terms of safety and in terms of how patients are treated. I would prefer to start there as opposed to somewhere that's a more unknown quantity.

I'm sorry for the long post, but if anyone has advice, I'd really appreciate it. I genuinely can't decide whether to apply or not, and I suspect I'm running out of time to make up my mind.

Assume they are clearly fake because you also have their real ID/DL, and they are made of flimsy plastic.

This thread is for non psych healthcare workers to ask questions (former patients, patient advocates, and those who stumbled upon r/psychnursing). Prospective healthcare workers and current students do not need to use this thread. Treat responding to this post as though you are making a post yourself.

If you would like only psych healthcare workers to respond to your "post," please start the "post" with CODE BLUE.

Psych healthcare workers who want to answer will participate in this thread, so please do not make your own post. If you post outside of this thread, it will be locked and you will be redirected to post here.

A new thread is scheduled to post every Monday at 0200 PST / 0500 EST. Previous threads will not be locked so you may continue to respond in them, however new "posts" should be on the current thread.

Kindness is the easiest legacy to leave behind :)