Thursday, 1 April 2010

Standard Phrases

The title of this blog is directly copied from a line I read time and time again in patients notes.

X has been settled and appropriate throughout the shift...
X has demonstrated settled and appropriate behaviour whilst on the ward...
...initially unsettled, X responded well to PRN medication and has been settled and appropriate for the rest of the shift...
Poor X.

What the staff member actually means when writing the term "settled and appropriate" is usually something like:

Patient X has kept his/her head down all day and hasn't done anything to create a fuss or cause me to notice them. In fact, I only really know Patient X is here because the healthcare support workers have marked him as present on the hourly fire checks. For all I know, patient X may not even exist.
Settled and appropriate indeed.

RMJ



Settled and Appropriate

I am a nurse, of the psychiatric variety rather than the "real" variety.

The "real nurses" (RN) think my job entails drinking tea, eating cake and biscuits and chatting to people. I do occasionally drink tea, I admit. I have even been known to use a cup of tea as a tool to help form a therapeutic relationship. I'm not too fond of cake though and I learned very early on in my career never to eat any gift of cake that has been prepared in the OT department by a patient.

I am a Registered Mental Nurse. RMN. 

I work on an inpatient ward caring for adults of working-age with a mental illness. My patients are, for the most part, acutely unwell. I like my job. I like my patients. I wouldn't ever want to work in any other area of nursing, because the care I deliver is person-centred rather than task orientated.

I can take a pulse, I can measure blood pressure and temperature. I can clean and dress wounds. I can even inject stuff into patients and take blood from their veins. In short, I can do everything a RN can do but I can do something extra too: I can create time to talk to my patients and treat them as individuals.

It's why I'm a RMN and not a RN.

Mine's a bourbon biscuit, please. Thank you. 

RMJ