Journal Entry No. 2

You can tell I'm liking Psych Nursing somehow (mostly because it's a form of 'self-help').

May 24, 2008

I was having a hard time picking a patient today. I didn't want to pick anyone who was bound to leave the next day. I eventually picked a suicidal adolescent who had issues with self-esteem.

My partner and I were assigned to take the girl adolescent unit's vital signs. While we did our work, I noticed that some of the girls had cut marks on their arms. Their smooth, youthful skin, marred by lines of red that blooms into white. I wonder what anguish brings them to try and destroy their humanity.

I watched one of my classmates do some therapeutic communication. From her, it seemed so natural and I thought it was going to be pretty hard for me to do that. I always have been a quiet person and I don't naturally strike the conversation. I had difficulty approaching my patient, C. She was surrounded by these other girls who seemed to do nothing but giggle among themselves. And I wasn't feeling particularly friendly either. When I meet C's eyes, I'd just smile and nod. Oftentimes, she would just look away.

During group, I was surprised to find that the female therapist was tired of asking the same old stuff (i.e. how are you doing). The group just began started talking about 'sex'. Unfortunately, the therapist seemed to have no control over the patients. The discussion simply went on and on until they ran out of time.

The unit seemed peaceful until the end of the day. A patient apparently cut herself again with a knife from the kitchen. The nurse became a little aggressive when she resisted to remove all her piercings. Before we left, she had all her piercings off and had her wounds treated.

It was scary to think that these children were so deeply troubled. You'd generally think, how could this have happened to them when you went through your childhood/puberty successfully? And you'd wonder, could this have happened to me?