The unique feature of nursing profession in healthcare industry is the vast scope for specialization. One nurse, with a basic nursing qualification, can choose any one specialized branch of nursing and gain expertise. One such area of specialization is Psychiatric nursing, also referred to as mental health nursing.

As a psychiatric nurse, you will be responsible for taking care of the people who are suffering from mental disability or some sort of mental illness, emotional distress, and or psychological disorders.

Contrary to the other departments such as pediatrics or geriatrics, as a psychiatric nurse, you will be dealing with patients of all ages, because mental disability can affect a person and make him a patient at any point of time.

Any nurse with a basic qualification cannot treat psychiatric patients with care, and as such, one needs to acquire some additional qualification and exposure to become a psychiatric nurse. In order to become a psychiatric nurse, apart from the basic qualifications, one should take up specialized courses on psychiatry as well as psychology, and should also allocate a part of their practical training to work with mentally-challenged psychiatric patients.

One should get certificate to work as a psychiatric nurse. Apart from the basic qualification and completion of the graduation, a nurse should attend courses that teach and provide training in topics related to mental health that include psychology, counseling as well as medications required for treating psychiatric patients.

You should be mentally tough and also have inner-strength to tackle psychiatric patients and most importantly, you should establish a good relationship with the patient because the nurse-patient relationship plays a very important role in curing the patients who are subjected to mental illness. The role of a psychiatric nurse is not just treatment and care for the patient, but a challenge to make the patient return to his or her normal state, and the love, affection and kindness, you, as a nurse, shower on the patient, is the ideal treatment and best way for cure from this mental disorder.

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Healthcare industry is one of the fastest growing industries and any profession in the healthcare industry is likely to have better prospects and opportunities than in other types of industries in an economy.

Nursing is one of the ideal choices in the health care industry where the demand for qualified people in the profession are in great demand and the requirement is on the rise with no signs of scarcity over the next few decades, if not more.

There are many ways through which one can get into the nursing profession. However, he or she should have some additional skills or traits, the most important of them being the compassionate heart and the urge and motivation to extend help and assistance to the people in general and the patients in particular.

One can become a Licensed Practical Nurse by enrolling himself or herself into a one-year diploma course offered by many vocational schools and or junior colleges.

Students enrolling to this course need to take up both academic and practical training skills in nursing care. The student is taught the basic concepts in nursing and such other things related to treatment of the patients. They will also be taught about the human anatomy, first aid, nutrition, methods of administering drugs to the patients, and all such related activities including surgical nursing. Apart from this academic knowledge, students are also required to take up practical course of patient care under the supervision of a senior instructor.

The successful completion of this 1-year course will make you eligible to apply for a license to practice as a nurse. You need to take up the licensing examination, normally conducted at a national level by the appropriate authority. On successful completion of the licensing examination, you will be provided with a license to carry out the practice as a Licensed Practicing Nurse.

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The profession of nursing is a noble one where you, as a nurse, have the opportunity to save a patient’s life by ensuring that the disease does not kill the patient, and above all, you change the patient to a person once again. In other words, it is the service of the nurse to an ailing patient that helps a patient become a normal person once again.

Do you say that nurse is a savior of the life? Or is the nurse a tormentor?

Let us assume for a while that I come to the hospital as a patient suffering from fever or a viral infection.

As a nurse, what do you do, in the first instance? As per the instruction of the doctor, you, the nurse, make me open the mouth and put a thermometer there without caring whether it would hurt me or not? I need to hold that thermometer in the mouth for the full 60 seconds while you do all other things without caring about me or my inconvenience in holding the thermometer in the mouth. You torment me for the full 60 seconds.

After 60 seconds, the thermometer is taken out and you read out the temperature to the doctor. The doctor then writes out some medicines in the prescription slip. After a couple of minutes, again you are in front of me, this time with a big needle and a small bottle, ready to poke me with the needle at the arm or the buttocks. Thank God – you give me an option nevertheless. Anyhow, you are bent on poking me and causing pain to me with the needle in the name of injection. You do not care about the shivering or the chillness I feel in the a/c room of the doctor. You ask me to unstrip the shirt or show the arm to you. Now, without much concern or care, you use the small cotton to rub the spot and immediately poke the needle. You just do not stop with the poking. You hold the needle in that place there and allow the medicine in the syringe behind the needle to flow through my body – another 30 seconds or so of the time till the needle is poked into the body. If the temperate is more or needs further diagnosis, then you come again to me with a needle and without any concern about my pain, just poke on one of my fingers and suck a good amount of blood – in the name of blood test. And finally, you say it is all part of the treatment to your disease – very cruel is it not?

For just a normal disease of temperature, you, the nurse, torment by poking me with the needle. You also put a thermometer in the mouth without any concern for my suffering or inconvenience. Imagine if I had met with an accident or have a disease, which requires surgery or some other investigations. What would be my state in your hands? I just could not imagine myself. You must no doubt be a tormentor only.

Wait a minute. Why did the nurse do all these things to me – poking me with an injection without caring for my pain or suck blood from me? Had the nurse not done that, he or she would not have been aware of the seriousness of the disease and the consequences of the same if left unattended. The nurse only hurt me with an injection or poked me to get some blood only to assess the gravity of the problem and also to find the right solution to kill the disease and save me from the disease. Had she not killed the disease then, of course in a cruel way tormenting me, the disease would have inevitably killed me.

So, the nurse is not a tormentor by any means. The nurse can always be only a savior.

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