A day in the Life of a Psychiatric Ward by Alison
I am lying asleep in a nice dream probably, when yet again am wakened the usual way, big bright strip lights on up you all get "medication" they shout.
You see I am in a psychiatric ward and that's your morning alarm call at 8am. So I totter out my bed, still half asleep I join the queue with the other patients, sometimes ten or fifteen lined up waiting for our pills to keep us quiet for the morning (not).
We all stand dopy in our pyjamas, the nurses doing my head in. They say "Morning Alison how are you?"
Inside my head I think "How would I bloody know, I have just been rudely awakened by you" but instead I say "I'm fine."
It seems the easiest thing to say as I don't really know as I have just woke up. Mind you it might be the only time in the day that one of them will ask you.
I get my medication and say thanks and I trot down for my sloppy breakfast of lumpy porridge, toast or cereal. I opt for the cereal; I have also to be in an orderly queue for my breakfast, it reminds me of lining up for school dinners nearly twenty years ago. I have my breakfast and think what exciting things I can do today. I can watch TV or go back to bed or watch TV, so I opt to watch TV.
Anyway today seems a different atmosphere, the boss is on which makes the staff on edge but they are more edgy I find out later there are very important people coming to visit the director of nursing and other head bosses. I had wondered why for two days they had about ten domestics on shift rather than one. So I wasn't allowed to go to my bed but was told to go and tidy my bed area which I did. I kept saying how beautiful and clean the place was, pity it was only like this because important people were coming. You could tell the staff were on edge in case things kicked off, which unfortunately could have, they were working in a psychiatric ward for God's sake, we weren't puppets who would behave because it suited them.
It came to lunch time, no sign of important people as I called them. I couldn't wait for them to go, the atmosphere was killing me. I trotted down to see what was on the a la carte menu for lunch; it was sloppy horrible steamed food that had travelled eleven miles from the other end of the city to get there. Normally I passed on the delicatessens and took a sandwich, it was safer. After lunch it was the same rigmarole for pills. I was shouted and I joined the line, it was quite degrading. After that eventually the staff heard that the important people were on their way down, you know, they were in for a maximum of fifteen minutes. Just looked at the patients, at least I know what important people dressed in suits with a title looked like. Not any different or better than me just more power and money.
The standards of cleaning shouldn't be priority to the important people, it should be patient care. I was dying to say, this is not really how the ward is.
All I can say is all the extra work, stress and money to pay people to do overtime , to clean the ward isn't worth it. Let the important people see what staff shortages do to a ward, be in reality not in a bubble. It made my day though and gave me a giggle, watching them running about. It was a change from the norm for me. Did I say being in a psychiatric ward can be a long and boring day?#
