Mental health patients are treated like 2nd class citizens in emergency rooms. These days there is a shortage of psychiatrists and beds. They ended staying hours in the ER, sometimes overnight. Either that or they are transferred to other hospitals locally or around the state. Not a good situation.
There are times we have 7-8 psychs in our ER. We have 3 rooms set up for mental health. What this means is there is a cart, with nothing on it or underneath it, just a sheet. There is nothing else in the room except a camera. When we have more than 3 patients we have to put them in regular rooms, using up rooms that could be used for medical patients. It gets to be a real problem when there are no beds in psych.
So anywho...one of the nurses came up with this idea. Why not put a few of them together in one of the bigger rooms. (GUFFAW) The idea being that it frees up other rooms. Um..
Perhaps we could hold group therapy. Play board games. Sing a longs. How about a rousing game of duck-duck-greyduck?
So there are 3-4 patients sitting on chairs in the room. The cart have been moved out. There is no TV. (don't even go there with me) The patients are in green scrubs. Everybody dressed alike brings prison to mind.. The patients sit and stare at each other. AWKWARD.....one of the patients is becoming agitated. Another patient is talking to himself. The other patient is scared shitless. Agitated Alan starts pacing in the little space there is. Hallucinating Harry starts getting paranoid. The 3rd patient runs from the room.
Its hopeless. Nice try thinking outside the box though. Here's a thought: Why don't we treat the mentally ill in this country the same way we treat the physically ill? What a concept.
No comments:
Post a Comment