Old School Mental Nurse

Ideas for organising the material.

I’m working on how I’ll organise this site. All I know so far is it won’t be neat and tidy. There are far too many topics and none of them can sit neatly on their own, they all cross-pollinate and affect other domains. Take the crusade towards eradicating restraint and seclusion. That touches staff injuries – sickness – overtime, agency and bank staff – resignations, vacancies, recruitment and retention – unions – Or from another angle – having to waste a staff constantly observing a secluded patient – additional time wasted arranging 2 & 4 hourly nursing and medical reviews – borrowing staff from other wards – staff not getting their breaks – notes and meds being late – ad nauseum.

Here’s a list I’ve started of categories and tags for posts.

Calocane – Violence – Least Restrictive – Unsustainable – Seclusion – Medication (many sub-categories here) – CQC – Community Nursing – Mental Hospital – Sectioning and MHA – Assertive Outreach – Leadership – Bring back Enrolled Nurses – Bring back Schools of Nursing – Degrees, Diplomas and Certificates – Schizophrenia – Borderline Personality Disorder – What’s gone wrong? – How to mend it – The Worried Well – Relapse –

And I’ll illustrate a lot of my points with real-life stories.

OSMN Glossary

ACVPU – Checklist for assessing levels of consciousness. Alert, conscious, responds to voice, responds to pain, unconscious.  

ASPD – Anti-social personality disorder

BILD – British Institute of Learning Difficulties. Used to be a storehouse of resources for Learning Difficulty professionals but has discovered there’s more money in being a quasi-regulator.

BPAD – Bipolar Affective disorder – not to be confused with BPD.

BPD – Borderline personality disorder (in UK MHS it has been ‘rebranded’ or euphemised as EUPD = Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. This is a bogus change, EUPD is a WHO/American classification, we use the DSM in the UK. Its been made to ‘protect’ the poor BPD from the ‘stigma’ of the term borderline.

C&R – Control and restraint. An old style course, now rescinded, that did what it says on the tin.

CPN – Community Psychiatric Nurse

CCO – Care Co-ordinator (one of the roles CPNs do but other professions also do)

DIP – Drug induced psychosis. A mental state, brought on by intoxication by drugs or alcohol which mimics a psychotic state but resolves within 48 hrs.

DNS – Director of Nursing Services

DSPD – Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (Unit)

GFC – Global Financial Crisis 2008-9

GOOFC – Get out of jail free card

HPD – Histrionic Personality Disorder

MDD – Major Depressive Disorder

MDE – Major Depressive Episode

MHA – Mental Health Act 2018. (previously revised in 2007 and before that 1981)

MHS – Mental health services

MOP – Member of the public

MVA – Management of violence and aggression. Course. (includes RRI, C&R, SPEC and other pitiful terms that don’t even dare use the horrid word restraint)

NPD – Narcissistic Personality Disorder

NIC – Nurse in charge.

NIK – No Idea Kier

RCP – Royal College of Physicians

RMN – Registered mental nurse (rebranded as mental health nurse)

RNMH – Registered mental handicap nurse (rebranded as RNLD = learning difficulties)

RRI – ‘Reducing Restrictive Interventions.’ A joke ‘restraint’ course that spends 3/4 of its length teaching false, woke ideologies about how horrid nurses are to restrain violent patients.

PD – Personality disorder. Often serves as hospital shorthand for an ASPD or BPD and a euphemism for a time-wasting, bed-stealing, non-mentally ill patient.

RT – Rapid tranquilisation. Usually two injections given simultaneously to sedate a patient who has lost control and cannot calm down by themselves – or is completely crackers.

TMVPIOS – ‘The most vulnerable people in our society’. False, made-up, catch-all phrase which can include almost anybody, depending on who the editor wants to demonise this week.

TTK – Two Tier Kier