Mental Health Nursing

[CrispsnDips]

Can anyone tell me what this kind of work is like? My daughter has chosen this as her Uni course but my husband thinks there are a lot of risks as regards physical assaults (more than in adult nursing).

I have been a mental health nurse for nearly 30 years, it was a vocation for me and I have never regretted my choice. Its been hugely rewarding, endlessly interesting, emotional, its been an absolute pleasure to care for people and work alongside some brilliant staff.

All that being said, there is a mental and emotional price to doing this work. I don’t work on wards anymore but doing so was hard physically and stressful juggling multiple challenging or risky patients needs often with short staffing. I was never assaulted but then I never worked in high risk areas (psychiatric intensive care or forensic). You are much more likely to be assaulted working in A+E to be honest.

The main cost to me has been the emotional burden of supporting people in high levels of distress, day in, day out. People share their trauma and it inevitably ‘rubs off’in you. Some peoples life stories are so terrible you can’t fully forget it, ever. Its called secondary trauma and its not really dealt with and nurses often develop compassion fatigue or trauma symptoms in their own right. Things are slowly improving in terms of support for staff but its not enough.

So I suppose its about how much someone really wants to do this work- if its a vocation or passion then its worthwhile but for many people the personal cost may be too great.

I'm a mental health nurse. Risk of aggression depends on where exactly you were. I have been assaulted numerous times in inpatient environments, but not in the community.