Having worked on the other side of the plexiglass barriers with a handful of magic keys in my pocket and my hand guarding my secret, indivdiual they know how opened the door for the escaped patient, code for years I know one of the biggest differences is that there's almost always an "us-them" mentality. It's how you survive working with people who are so sick. I hated seeing it in myself but I did it too.

When I'm in the hospital it's always been in this little mood disorders unit with only 10 beds. It's the ideal if you've got to be locked up. And some nurses I've bonded with some with shared healthcare experiences. One in particular will take time to just sit and talk to me when she is free and we talk about home health and various things we've seen doing that (her in the big city and me in rural Appalachia plus a smaller city a long time ago). But I've also seen that nurse absolutely throw a tantrum over some miscommunication or something (I was too manic to care). Another nurse that I really like a lot I once heard make a snide comment while going through my bag because I had a clock in there. I had the clock in my bag because I traveled a lot for work right then and just grabbed the already packed bag when I was going to the hospital. I know she had no idea I was where I could hear her but I was. I also like having a clock b/c I can't see the wall clock without glasses. But whatever.

There is this one nurse that I really, really dislike and so do most patients because she talks down to people. The first time I was in she ran a group every night where she'd pass out handouts and read them to us for an hour to an hour and a half every night. No discussion, just reading boring, boring stupid stuff. She once compared our feelings about being locked up with what it is like to have to go all the way downstairs and outside to smoke (while smokers in the group were already suffering). She's completely fake; last time I was in I was really suicidal and the night after they learned this, after I'd had a long talk with nursing the night before and with my psychiatriast she pulled me into a conference room and grilled me. I guess the suicide note wasn't enough detail. She was my nurse every day that she was on in the nearly 2 weeks I was in there and the night before I went home she told "Lisa" to go wake another patient. I figured there was an aide behind me so I ignored her. Turns out she meant me. I was one of her max of 5 patients for 2 weeks, she gave me meds every day and did not know my name (also this was my 3rd time in, 2nd time in 2 months).My own psychiatrist admitted that a lot of people complain about her. The best was the day that I caught how fake she is. I had a roommate who was sexually inappropriate and so was sitting in the hall writing in my journal to avoid her visitor. My own psychiatrist was covering the weekend. That nurse and my roommate were in this little hall gossipping like old friends (the roommate is in and out a lot). So after a while I heard the nurse say with a huge sigh "oh, well, I should go, Dr. psychiatrist is here", sigh again, what a bother implied. I was positioned exactly in the right place to hear both that and then to hear her open the nursing station door and effusively proclaim "Dr Psychiatrist!!!!Oh, it's so good to see you!". And don't think I didn't tell my psychiatrist either . If the Lisa thing hadn't happened maybe not but really. Jen is only the most common name for women around 40 and it's not hard to remember and she'd had 2 weeks to practice. Good thing there wasn't a Lisa or who knows what meds I might have gotten. That nurse takes the us-they to an extreme and I think lots do.

I remember working and having a patient with horrible pain and it was magnified by his schizoprenia. The nurse refused to do anything to treat it because "he doesn't know what he feels anyway" and then because I was close to this man, something pretty much nobody had achieved in the 20 years he'd been in the institution she told me his entire history which included murder and some bad things but a lifetime ago and in specific circumstances; he told me about it a few days before he died because he thought I was the Virgin Mary. His history didn't matter, his pain did. But he wasn't "us" the normal people so it didn't matter. Once we had a woman who normally wouldn't have been placed with us but rehabs wouldn't take her. She was bipolar and had been med compliant for 30 years but something happened and she stopped her meds. While in the hospital she got up in the night while confused, fell and broke her leg in a way that needed a lot of rehab. She was still getting stabilized on meds when she came to us and there were a lot of people who refused to believe that she was capable of returning to society. Of course she was, once her meds were back in place she was fine except for the healing leg. But instead of seeing that they had her on the locked semi-acute, you have no privacy for any moment of your day unit for 2 weeks. I have so many other stories but they all come back to the you/them thing.


This was kind of the way you thought from the start and honestly they encouraged it. I wasn't actually told I was going to be working in psychiatric care so I thought I was at a normal nursing home until I'd been there an hour and walked down a hall and a man laying on the floor informed me "I'm dead" (he would grow to be a favorite, always trying to marry me off to random male staff members) and 30 seconds later a completely naked man sauntered down the hall and nobody seemed surprised. They were used to it. I was stunned. So when I went back to the office and said "WHAT?????" it was very much "oh yes, our patients either have severe mental illnesses, dementia with violent behaviors or traumatic brain injuries either getting rehab or with violent behaviors". Ok, then......And by the end of the day I'd been taught to use humor to cope with a really sad place to on the surface (when I got to know everyone it wasn't sad at all).

But that's how it works. And that's what makes it hard; they don't picture themselves in our shoes. On my first stay my AD left my system and the new one wasn't in my system yet and I just started crying and couldn't stop. I tried to get nurses a couple of times but they were busy with a discharge. The aide noticed when he did room checks but instead of getting me help and medication that I clearly needed he offered me a joke. I wanted so badly to throw a pencil at him. I'd been sobbing for over an hour; jokes were beyond helping. He should have gotten a nurse for me but left me to cry another half hour before another patient got me help. Again, us/them. Depressed woman is sobbing so let's make her not depressed with jokes.

They don't mean to do it exactly, it's just the way it's always been I think. It's just very hard to avoid, especially because it's so prevelant.

I'm shutting up now.....sorry. This is one of my big things that bother me because of being on both sides. For years I was afraid of the hospital because I knew what it was like for our locked up patients. When I got there it was the weirdest things that surprised me, like paper trash bags, the screen over the windows (I expected bars outside but not the heavy mesh inside for some reason). I was surprised that we could have shoes and even belts during the day although I've never used either. Lots of other things.

But at least the place isn't really traumatic. Not fun but not horrible.