The State of Mental Health Care - Part Deux

A lot of nurses and other workers in mental health have jobs in several hospitals and they see the same patients in one hospital being in another hospital in a matter of days or even lesser. Some of the patients may get discharged from one hospital and would be in another the same day. Hospital hopping is so very common in this field. When a patient wants to get admitted to a psychiatric unit, they know exactly what to tell the mental health evaluator or Psychiatric Emergency Team (PET). All the patient has to say is that he or she wants to hurt him/herself or hurt other people and that they have a plan on how to do it. You should see how many of these people say running into traffic as their plan. The PET team member has no way of determining whether this is true or not so it has to be taken at face value. The only way of preventing persons from hurting themselves or others is admitting them to a psych unit where they can be observed closely by the staff. Of course there are a lot of patients who really need help and are really serious about hurting themselves or others, but there are on the other hand a bunch of others who are just malingering because they have run out of money for one reason or another, and just need a place to sleep and eat for free until they get their next social security disability checks.
This entry is not really a complaint about the patients we take care of, and like the PET team member, we just have to take things at face value and take care of the patients the best we can whether they are malingerers or not. Although its sometimes difficult to handle, specially when the malingerers are usually the more demanding patients with a sense of entitlement. Until Medicare, Medi-Cal, and/or the Social Security System catches on to it, or keeps on allowing it, or God forbid turns a blind eye to it, this is what we have to live with.