Pros
I love my patients. I love my team. Always something new and exciting and something to laugh about. Because of staffing shortage, they are offering crazy bonuses for picking up hours. Security team is pretty good for backup during unsafe situations. And this is pretty much the only psych hospital in the area right now, so if you want psych-this is it! Fosters a huge sense of “loyalty”- feels like if we left, who would take care of our patients, but this is also not a super healthy work/life balance to have: we feel responsible when the unit is short or people get hurt, when it is really management pushing for us to do more and more with less and less resources.
Cons
We are hemorrhaging staff right now. Can’t keep anyone with experience , and management is offering no support or incentive to stay. Staffing is horribly short, using float and travel staff to fill some of the gaps but they are not necessarily “psych” nurses , so a lot of the burden goes to the few of our actual staff that are still there. New staff unintentionally can cause safety issues because they just don’t know what is safe and what is not. Conditions not always safe, we have had a lot of pretty severe staff injuries from patient violence. And then verbal aggression is pretty much every day. Police will refuse to take patients to jail when they repeatedly and severely assault staff, saying it’s a “psych” problem, and it’s part of our job. There is a definite push to take more patients than is safe and feasible, and with facilities closing down we have a hard time finding safe placement for patients to go to once discharged, causing a “revolving door” situation for patients.