An Open Letter to Mental Health Workers

Dear co-workers, here are ideas that may make our jobs a little easier in the long run.

Ø When a patient brings in their own clothes and they are being inventoried during admission, have him or her pick three or four sets to take to their room and not keep all of the clothes in the contraband locker. This is to avoid us from having to go back and forth to get clothes for the patient when he or she needs them. Quite often, staffmembers take all the clothes and keep them in the lockers then days later the patient asks for them.

Ø When a patient brings in a cell phone, give them a chance to retrieve some phone numbers that they may need later from it, instead of locking it in the safe right away. This way we don’t have to keep calling the security guard to open the safe just to retrieve phone numbers from the cell phone. Have you noticed that this happens frequently?

Ø If the patient has some valuables that need to be stored in the safe, it is not necessary for you to list it on the regular property list because the security guard has to make a list of it anyway which is attached to your regular list. So you can eliminate this redundancy and safe yourself time.

ØBefore you take the patient’s picture, please have them sign the consent first. You’ll be surprised how many or our co-workers take the picture before the patient consents to it.

Ø Please don’t leave the paperclip from the admit packet lying around in the admitting area where a patient can pick it up and use it as a tool to hurt themselves, or worse, hurt us. I realize that they can use just about anything to cut themselves with, even their fingernails, but at least let us not give them some obvious tools to do it.

Ø If the addressograph name plate is not immediately available, at least print the patients’ full name on their close observation form so there is little danger of misfiling it in the wrong chart.

Ø Other miscellaneous things: when you return from your break, the first thing you should do is check on your patients and not just rely on the information of the person relieving you, because you are eventually responsible for your own patients. This is especially important on the night shift. Just because the patient hasn’t gotten up, let us not assume that they are asleep in bed. Besides, being in bed doesn’t mean they are alive, so we really have to make sure that they are. Please check them more frequently and make sure they are breathing. If you are one of those workers who do rounds diligently and see that a patient hasn’t moved from one position in a while, that’s the more reason to check for breathing. If a patient has been in the bathroom for awhile when you do your rounds and even if they respond to you from inside, we should not assume that they are safe. They may be attempting to hurt themselves in there. If after several prompts the patient doesn’t come out, you may have to violate their privacy just to make sure they are safe. At least have a co-worker of the same sex as the patient accompany you in opening the bathroom door so if the patient accuses you of doing something illegal, you have a witness. Another additional item: Please expel or squeeze all the air out of the blood pressure cuff before checking a patients' blood pressure. You can't believe how many people do this seemingly simple thing incorrectly!

Anything else anyone wants to add that I missed? Other than the above, we are doing a pretty good job of doing our admission responsibilities. These are just practical suggestions that may save us time and grief later. Thank you for reading and listening.