posted 2019-07-17 23:55:00

Today I worked the morning in the electroshock unit of a psychiatric floor of a major medical center, and friends, let me tell you, it was activly boring.

I failed to get an IV established on a guy with pipes thicker than The Dean's dick,(major anxiety issues, workes out a lot, had weird GI symptoms under stress, huge arm vein I managed to blow) - this was kind of pathetic. For a clinical site that carries as much cultural weight as an electroshock unit, I was bored.

I'd wondered why the electroshock wandered over to the other side of the unit on monday at like 2 in the afternoon and spent like two hours just dicking around. Now I know.

Honestly, I liked my psych rotations. I'm going to the high acuity floor next week. We got alarmed in today- it was the one exciting thing that happend, all the psych people have PINs (little locator devices, basically a panic button) where that location gets swarmed with like 15 people. They had like six people on this dude on the upstairs floor, behavior techs pinning him to the bed while the RNs got the four point restraints on him while another RN eventually got the shot in his arm.

His tox screen was totally clean. he's mostly catatonic with minimal verbal hallucinations, until you offer him the drugs that make all that go away, and then he gets really not catatonic.

That was the one exciting thing that happend.

Thing is, I'm not sure I want to work in a place where it's like 12 hours of mostly boredom with like 7 minutes of physical violence. Shit like that is why I don't play games like Silent Hill.


The psych unit folks on their own are ok, to hang out with and talk with, many of them. One dude has been schizophrenic for decades. It's a chronic medical condition. With drugs, the voices are indcipherable murmurs. WIthout drugs, it gets bad. He's into his 60s, worked on a shrimp boat most of his life, now kind of homeless. Got robbed, had no drugs, checked into the ED. I'm kind of concerned that he's old now and getting institution-freindly. Like he's got no place else to go.