Tales from the Nuthouse: Lest You Think I have a Really Cool Job

[wolf]

Originally Posted by SteveDallas

What's your intake rate for former and/or current staff?

Counting the psychiatrist who went catatonic in the chart room?

Lower than you might think. I know that several people have gotten quietly sent off to rehab a couple of times, and we had this really bad run of "Peer Specialists." A "Peer Specialist" is a recovered nut/druggie who works with patients. They are supposed to have a special kind of street cred with other nuts/druggies.

Unfortunately, not all of them are recovered enough to do this. We lost one or two of them shortly before they began working, and the other had been doing really well, but the stress got to him and he started using drugs again (after five or so years or so sobriety). The supervisors in our department (who spent the most time with him) were the last to figure it out, even after money started disappearing from the safe and dude would be really jumpy right before lunch and really calm afterwards. There was a tense couple of weeks with the "new clock radio" in our copier/safe room ... the cool part about the hidden camera was that it actually told time and had a decent radio tuner on it.

And then there was the fellow who replaced the druggie, who wasn't a peer specialist but might as well have been. He was the one who got caught by Perverted Justice (yes, the people from the Dateline episodes). He was using computers in our office to chat with someone he thought was a 13 year old girl.

And years ago there was a young lady who had worked as an intern in our medical records department that became psychotic. She has some good periods of stability, but lately she's been in and out.

Guess there were more than I thought. But given the number of employees we have, it's still a pretty low number.

Last night ended with our getting a crazy nurse from another facility. She was a treat. Think of the crankiest nurse you know, and then imagine her hearing voices.

Made Nurse Ratched seem like a real sweetheart.