Psychiatric Rotation

I'm about to leave for our orientation at the psychiatric hospital.  I'm excited and a little unsure about this.  I don't really have many preconceived notions about nurses in psych hospitals- I guess I always thought there were only orderlies in psych hospitals.  We can thank the media for implanting that idea in my head.  But it seems to me that nurses at psych hospitals will mostly pass meds.  I hope it's not like long-term care; that rotation made me sure I did not want to work with the geriatric population.  I want to do something fast-paced with a lot of patient interaction, and I want to be able to use the techniques we're learning how to do.

I would love to work with patients with anorexia nervosa or bullimea in the psych rotation.  I feel a special concern for them.  I want them to be free of their chains.  But we'll see what happens in this rotation.  It doesn't start until Febuary, so I have some time to ponder what it will be like.  I could be working with patients who are coming off of a substance abuse problem OR I could get to work with people who have disorders like schizophrenia.  It'll be interesting no matter where I'm put. 

In our biopsychosocial class we'll be studying eating disorders for one week.  I think this class will be really interesting, but soooo different from what we learned last semester.  One of our assignments is to attend an AA meeting.  We are to introduce ourselves in the typical format, but we'll say that we're nursing students instead of alcoholics.  "Hi, I'm Elyse and I've been a nursing student since August..."  I would have laughed if our teacher made us say we were alcoholics.  Then we'd be like spies infiltrating an AA meeting.

Fortunately NU doesn't require that its students are that sneaky.  haha...