YKYW - Nursing Student Blog

My psych clinicals were pretty interesting. We spent some time observing at a state mental hospital, and I was assigned to the forensic unit. Patients on the forensic unit are there because they committed some type of crime, and the courts are trying to settle issues of competency to stand trial. I enjoyed getting to see how they try to help patients with mental illness understand the judicial process.

It was a little disturbing to find out about how the hospital handles deciding when to confine a patient to the unit, and when they are allowed to go out on the hospital grounds without a chaperone. I must admit I was a surprised to find out that someone could commit a violent crime, yet work their way up through the reward system and earn full grounds privileges. It isn’t all that hard to get out of the hospital, and I’m not sure I’d want to live near the place.

The hotel experience was like a comedy of errors. Since it takes about 2 hours to get there, my school friend and I decided to get a room near the hospital for each of the two weeks that we had to be there. For the first week, my friend made the arrangements. We arrive at the hotel, and I go into the bathroom — there are roaches everywhere! Luckily, we were able to find another room at a different place. On the second week, we check in and our toilet overflows, so we wind up switching rooms around 1130p. It made for a very long night.

Oh! And, I almost forgot to write about the best part of the clinical experience! I was able to observe 2 sessions of ECT. Now, I don’t know about you, but I had a lot of misconceptions about “shock therapy.” As they were setting up one patient, the doctor asked me if I wanted to touch the patient’s foot so that I could feel the seizure.

“Do I touch it after you remove the electrodes?”
“No, touch it now and keep it there throughout the procedure.”

I had no idea I could touch someone while they were getting shocked! It was really a very cool experience. And, you could see a positive change in both patients within minutes of having ECT.

Going into my psych clinicals, I really wasn’t looking forward to it. All that “touchy-feely” theraputic communication just isn’t my thing. But, I was pleasantly surprised by the whole clinical rotation. As a TK learner, I appreciated getting to actually hear clanging and echolalia, see akathisia and talk to a patient with delusions and hallucinations … it was invaluable. I don’t think I could work as a psych nurse, but my clinical rotations did change my attitude about it.