Never mind the Buzzcocks

A few years ago, I went to a local semi-secure psychiatric unit, to see a nurse who was reporting a minor road accident. I got buzzed in the door, and then approached in the lobby by bloke who was sat down, reading a copy of The Times. He asked who I was there for, I said, and he went off to find the nurse. He came back and we chatted while we waited for the nurse to come down.

He was very well informed and rational, and I took him for another nurse. After a few minutes, a raggedy looking guy in a rather threadbare woollen multicoloured jumper and ripped combats with long dreadlocks came down the stairs, saw the first guy talking to me and shouted "Dennis! Get back in your room at once.

I'd been talking to one of the loons.

Thing is, if I'd been face to face with the pair of them, I'd have chosen the loon to be the nurse and vice versa every time. It's like that game on "Never mind the Buzzcocks", where you have to pick the real former celeb out of the lineup of 4 or 5 stooges.

I don't know if it says more about me, psychiatric nurses, or lunatics.

Individuals in the mental health services are as overrun with work as the rest of us. I have no gripe with fellow professionals, but I do have a big gripe with their management. When they go to section a mental patient/soon to be mental patient, and they expect a fight, it is quite usual to call us. Fine, you might think, but it is a purely medical issue.

The NHS is responsible for ensuring mental patients security once they are inside the walls of a mental institution, logically and legally, they are responsible once the doctor/social worker has made the decision to section. Why, therefore, one might ask, do they not employ staff who are trained to restrain patients? Pubs and clubs employ bouncers, businesses employ security guards, rich businessmen employ bodyguards, so why does the NHS not do likewise.

We can and do help out where we can, but the various mental health trusts manifestly refuse to employ, allocate or train staff to restrain violent patients, which is, basically, their job. Because they do not employ sufficient staff to fulfill their responsibilities, they ask us. It's not like we're trained to do it either, we have 2 1/2 days training a year in self-defence, which covers baton, handcuffs, CS spray and various holds, most of which go out the window in a real punch up. We are no better trained for restraining the mentally ill than anyone else.

The same principle does not work the other way, you wouldn't be happy having a psychiatric nurse investigate your aunties burglary through lack of police resources or police abdicating their responsibility, so why accept the fact that the NHS does the same when your auntie goes a bit loco and needs to go away for months to be made better?

There's talk of a Royal Commission to decide what exactly the polices job is and crucially, what it isn't. There's a lot of shit we end up having to do because no-one else answers the phone outside of business hours. Maybe it's time a Royal Commission looked at other major UK institutions as well...?