Lots of drama in the psych ward

Time to catch up on what's been happening. Today was a hectic day, the unit was very understaffed with 2 nurses (out of 6) calling in sick and no one else could (or would) come in to fill in. So me and the other student nurse were given the responsibility of doing the ward rounds all day (checking on each patient every 30 minutes). I did that for the first couple of hours and then he took over. Also, the night before one of the patients had trashed his room destroying everything he could including smashing the window. So the smoking courtyard which the window was connected to was out of bounds because of all the broken glass. The rest of the patients were unsettled by it of course and needed to have their smokes so they just smoked inside. The patients was put into the high dependency unit and then he smashed that room too even though it has very thick hard to break special glass. He somehow managed to pull the bench which was bolted down and used that to smashed it. And there was blood all over the floor. He was taken into police custody after that.

So today the ward was pretty frantic. I got asked to run a yoga and meditation class in the morning which went really well for those who attended. One of them was from the high dependency unit and the staff said it was the calmest they had ever seen her. I have been doing a lot of one on one time with this patient over the last two weeks because I have a good rapport with her and she behaves well whenever I am around but unfortunately can be very childish and aggressive with other staff. So we've been bribing her with the promise of 'time with Kate' if she is good for a few a hours. I usually take for a walk around the other part of the ward for 30 minutes to an hour, sit out in the courtyard, chat, encourage her to write in her journal, and help her interact positively with the other patients. The other day I was allowed to take her outside the unit and outside on hospital grounds which was the first time she had left the building in about a month. She needed money from the ATM to buy cigarettes and it turned into a bit of a shopping spree buying something from the cafe (capuccino for her, and donut for me), gifts (for herself) from the gift shop, and so on.

With the same patient I also got the chance to look in her ear with an otoscope because she thought she 'might have a cigarette filter stuck in there'. When I asked how it got in there and when it happened she said she 'was trying to block out the voices' and that it was 'about a month ago'. I looked in her ear and it was indeed lodged in there. Got one of the doctors on the ward to try to get it out with tweezers but it was too delicate so she had to go to the ear specialists in the other part of the hospital. After that she said 'I've learnt my lesson', LOL.