Yeah 10 total years and a dozen Daisy noms in and I still feel like my foot is constantly in my mouth. You also have to walk this horrible tightrope of remembering this is the worst day of someone’s life then emotionally file it under your 400th Tuesday. The cognitive dissonance of that alone is enough to drive you bonkers.
It doesn’t help that in psych a lot of the time there’s no solution for keeping the person safe that’s not going to horribly traumatize them. I’ve had to do things to people to keep them alive and as unharmed as possible that are still probably gonna feature in their nightmares. I try not to but sometimes they’re already so traumatized that they just won’t be able to see what I’m doing as beneficial. We’ve got people with past sexual assault traumas who are so out of it they don’t realize that urine has been sitting on their skin for days and the acid is dissolving their genitals. They can’t put the steps in order to clean themselves but they also can’t safely accept me touching them to help. The other day I did something as simple as trying to help someone dial the phone and when we finally got through they got it into their head that I’d replaced their loved one on the other end with an imposter.
Some days you just Will Not Win but the fact that human bodies and social interactions have so many uncontrolled variables (and infinitely more when combined) will leave you wondering every time you think about it that maybe there was some right answer you just couldn’t find. Maybe I should have waited longer. Maybe I took too long. Maybe I should’ve played music. Maybe the environment was too loud. Maybe I should’ve been kinder. Maybe I wasn’t straightforward enough. The list just keeps going.
System for writing thank you notes to a nurse. They give you a little enamel pin to put on your badge that I’m not comfortable possibly accidentally losing on an acute psych unit so they’re just scattered around my house. Then about every quarter each hospital gives an award to one of the nominees (although usually an employee with better optics than one of the night shift psychiatry goblins). So like, objectively, at least a few of my patients feel cared for. It’s just hard to feel that way sometimes. I’m more protective of the actual written messages than the pins. I have one from a patient I received from the outgoing shift in restraints that I keep in the frame with my license (and it’s not like I let them out right away either, most of what they were happy with was me catching their dystonia but I had the advantage of having had it myself before).
i have had a nurse i have wanted to thank for decades (i had major surgery, my mother wanted to stay overnight in my room and this kind nurse let my mother get cleaned up at her place. we were going to get a gym membership but she would not hear of it. she almost got in a fistfight with a radiologist for me. all i ever knew was her first name, she was the best). i had no idea there was a formal system. how widespread is this? (is it just psych?)
☝️
Yeah 10 total years and a dozen Daisy noms in and I still feel like my foot is constantly in my mouth. You also have to walk this horrible tightrope of remembering this is the worst day of someone’s life then emotionally file it under your 400th Tuesday. The cognitive dissonance of that alone is enough to drive you bonkers.
It doesn’t help that in psych a lot of the time there’s no solution for keeping the person safe that’s not going to horribly traumatize them. I’ve had to do things to people to keep them alive and as unharmed as possible that are still probably gonna feature in their nightmares. I try not to but sometimes they’re already so traumatized that they just won’t be able to see what I’m doing as beneficial. We’ve got people with past sexual assault traumas who are so out of it they don’t realize that urine has been sitting on their skin for days and the acid is dissolving their genitals. They can’t put the steps in order to clean themselves but they also can’t safely accept me touching them to help. The other day I did something as simple as trying to help someone dial the phone and when we finally got through they got it into their head that I’d replaced their loved one on the other end with an imposter.
Some days you just Will Not Win but the fact that human bodies and social interactions have so many uncontrolled variables (and infinitely more when combined) will leave you wondering every time you think about it that maybe there was some right answer you just couldn’t find. Maybe I should have waited longer. Maybe I took too long. Maybe I should’ve played music. Maybe the environment was too loud. Maybe I should’ve been kinder. Maybe I wasn’t straightforward enough. The list just keeps going.
Daisy noms?
System for writing thank you notes to a nurse. They give you a little enamel pin to put on your badge that I’m not comfortable possibly accidentally losing on an acute psych unit so they’re just scattered around my house. Then about every quarter each hospital gives an award to one of the nominees (although usually an employee with better optics than one of the night shift psychiatry goblins). So like, objectively, at least a few of my patients feel cared for. It’s just hard to feel that way sometimes. I’m more protective of the actual written messages than the pins. I have one from a patient I received from the outgoing shift in restraints that I keep in the frame with my license (and it’s not like I let them out right away either, most of what they were happy with was me catching their dystonia but I had the advantage of having had it myself before).
Thanks for the info; I’d never heard of that.
i have had a nurse i have wanted to thank for decades (i had major surgery, my mother wanted to stay overnight in my room and this kind nurse let my mother get cleaned up at her place. we were going to get a gym membership but she would not hear of it. she almost got in a fistfight with a radiologist for me. all i ever knew was her first name, she was the best). i had no idea there was a formal system. how widespread is this? (is it just psych?)
Not at all, it originated in medical iirc
I hope that someday if I need the care, that you are the one doing it. Thank you for being exceptional.