What do psychiatric nurses do?!

What do psychiatric nurses do?

Just curious...Do you still have to take regular nursing programs beforehand or is it mainly practising the mental health field? Because I am not into anatomy or physiology but I like the mental health field. Will psychiatric nurses even be in demand in the future? Is it a good profession to go into or is it stressful?

Everything!! I am a veteran of over 40 years having been diagnosed with Schizophrenia Paranoia. I ascribe 90% of my treatment and recovery to psychiatric nurses! I have been treated primarily in VA hospitals.

There Pstchiatric nurses need to be RN's. They need to know the same things regular RN's are taught in nursing school as well as mental health and behavioral skills. A good many of them go on to get a masters degree in nursing and become Psychiatric Nurse practitioners (ARNP's) who do just about everything a psychiatrist does (and more!).

There is a great demand for nurses overall and there will always be a need for psychiatric nurses especially if our nation continues to be engaged in wars where men and women come out seriously scarred by physical and mental.
wounds.

Psychiatric nursing can be boring but only if you consider it just a job where you "kindly pass out pills". You have to have empathy for your patients! If you really get into the patients lives, which in my opinion is where a nurse is most positively beneficial, it can be stressful, because mental patients are usually the products of stressful situations.

I hope you can get over an aversion to anatomy and physiology to become a really good psychiatric nurse.

Good luck, good health, peace and love!