What Skills Are Pertinent to Psychiatric Nursing?

In order to become a psychiatric nurse, you will need to have to develop certain skill to be successful in this field. This is a specialized area where you work with patients in a psychiatric well being. You will have general nursing skills, along with psychiatric skills. Some of the problems you might face are eating disorders, dementia, suicide, and many other mental issues.

One of the disorders you will have to deal with in psychiatric nursing includes patients that are suffering from eating disorders. You will have to know about different eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. You will also have to know how to help the patients that have these problems.

Another disorder that you will have to know about includes dementia. This is a skill that is very critical in the field of psychiatric nursing.



Being able to recognize and handle patients that are suicidal is another skill set that a psychiatric nurse will have to acquire. It might seem like a rare case, but there are actually many depressed people out there that consider suicide as an easy answer. You have to be really careful of what you say around these people, and help them feel wanted. Sometimes the smallest things can change a persons mind.

Counseling patients is something that many psychiatric nurses have to do, using different techniques while counseling the patient is required to help them with serious mental issues. This job is more that just counseling but keeping track of patients' vital signs, fluid intake and output and their overall behavior must be done by the psychiatric nurse as well.