Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Hello, I'm Your Crazy Psychiatric Nurse

The events in this story took place around 1990. I was working at Capistrano by Sea Hospital, which was a free standing psychiatric hospital. I filled out an application for a job at another local psych hospital. I called a few times to speak to the director of nurses and never got her. I finally got an appointment set up by her secretary. When I went into her office, the first thing she said to me was, “We’ve been playing phone tag for days now, haven’t we?’
I replied, “ Since you never called me I don’t think tag describes it.”
And she said, “I guess you don’t really want a job, do you?”
“I don’t want to work for someone who lies to my face,” was my snappy comeback.
And this summarizes my working life. I worked regularly for many, many years. But it was very much because I tended to stay away from such situations. I mainly worked nights and weekends. And often avoided staff meetings since someone with my tendencies might end up saying something stupid. And I was tolerated since I was dependable, hard working and usually wanted only what was best for my patients. Though concern for one’s patients welfare isn’t always the way into nursing management’s heart.

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