Nursing Bullets: Psychiatric Nursing II
Nursing Bullets: Psychiatric Nursing II
- Defense mechanisms protect the personality by reducing stress and anxiety.
- Suppression is voluntary exclusion of stress-producing thoughts from the consciousness.
- In psychodrama, life situations are approximated in a structured environment, allowing the participant to recreate and enact scenes to gain insight and to practice new skills.
- Psychodrama is a therapeutic technique that’s used with groups to help participants gain new perception and self-awareness by acting out their own or assigned problems.
- A patient who is taking disulfiram (Antabuse) must avoid ingesting products that contain alcohol, such as cough syrup, fruitcake, and sauces and soups made with cooking wine.
- A patient who is admitted to a psychiatric hospital involuntarily loses the right to sign out against medical advice.
- “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” and “A rolling stone gathers no moss” are examples of proverbs used during a psychiatric interview to determine a patient’s ability to think abstractly. (Schizophrenic patients think in concrete terms and might interpret the glass house proverb as “If you throw a stone in a glass house, the house will break.”)
- Signs of lithium toxicity include diarrhea, tremors, nausea, muscle weakness, ataxia, and confusion.
- A labile affect is characterized by rapid shifts of emotions and mood.
- Amnesia is loss of memory from an organic or inorganic cause.
- A person who has borderline personality disorder is demanding and judgmental in interpersonal relationships and will attempt to split staff by pointing to discrepancies in the treatment plan.
- Disulfiram (Antabuse) shouldn’t be taken concurrently with metronidazole (Flagyl) because they may interact and cause a psychotic reaction.
- In rare cases, electroconvulsive therapy causes arrhythmias and death.
- A patient who is scheduled for electroconvulsive therapy should receive nothing by mouth after midnight to prevent aspiration while under anesthesia.
- Electroconvulsive therapy is normally used for patients who have severe depression that doesn’t respond to drug therapy.
- For electroconvulsive therapy to be effective, the patient usually receives 6 to 12 treatments at a rate of 2 to 3 per week.
- During the manic phase of bipolar affective disorder, nursing care is directed at slowing the patient down because the patient may die as a result of self-induced exhaustion or injury.
- For a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, the nursing care plan should focus on safety measures.
- After sexual assault, the patient’s needs are the primary concern, followed by medicolegal considerations.
- Patients who are in a maintenance program for narcotic abstinence syndrome receive 10 to 40 mg of methadone (Dolophine) in a single daily dose and are monitored to ensure that the drug is ingested.
- Stress management is a short-range goal of psychotherapy.
- The mood most often experienced by a patient with organic brain syndrome is irritability.
- Creative intuition is controlled by the right side of the brain.
- Methohexital (Brevital) is the general anesthetic that’s administered to patients who are scheduled for electroconvulsive therapy.
- The decision to use restraints should be based on the patient’s safety needs.
- Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) relieves the extrapyramidal adverse effects of psychotropic drugs.
- In a patient who is stabilized on lithium (Eskalith) therapy, blood lithium levels should be checked 8 to 12 hours after the first dose, then two or three times weekly during the first month. Levels should be checked weekly to monthly during maintenance therapy.
- The primary purpose of psychotropic drugs is to decrease the patient’s symptoms, which improves function and increases compliance with therapy.
- Manipulation is a maladaptive method of meeting one’s needs because it disregards the needs and feelings of others.
- If a patient has symptoms of lithium toxicity, the nurse should withhold one dose and call the physician.
- A patient who is taking lithium (Eskalith) for bipolar affective disorder must maintain a balanced diet with adequate salt intake.
- A patient who constantly seeks approval or assistance from staff members and other patients is demonstrating dependent behavior.
- Alcoholics Anonymous advocates total abstinence from alcohol.
- Methylphenidate (Ritalin) is the drug of choice for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.
- Setting limits is the most effective way to control manipulative behavior.
- Violent outbursts are common in a patient who has borderline personality disorder.
- When working with a depressed patient, the nurse should explore meaningful losses.
- An illusion is a misinterpretation of an actual environmental stimulus.
- Anxiety is nonspecific; fear is specific.
- Extrapyramidal adverse effects are common in patients who take antipsychotic drugs.
- The nurse should encourage an angry patient to follow a physical exercise program as one of the ways to ventilate feelings.
- Depression is clinically significant if it’s characterized by exaggerated feelings of sadness, melancholy, dejection, worthlessness, and hopelessness that are inappropriate or out of proportion to reality.
- Free-floating anxiety is anxiousness with generalized apprehension and pessimism for unknown reasons.
- In a patient who is experiencing intense anxiety, the fight-or-flight reaction (alarm reflex) may take over.
- Confabulation is the use of imaginary experiences or made-up information to fill missing gaps of memory.
- When starting a therapeutic relationship with a patient, the nurse should explain that the purpose of the therapy is to produce a positive change.
- A basic assumption of psychoanalytic theory is that all behavior has meaning.
- Catharsis is the expression of deep feelings and emotions.
- According to the pleasure principle, the psyche seeks pleasure and avoids unpleasant experiences, regardless of the consequences.
- A patient who has a conversion disorder resolves a psychological conflict through the loss of a specific physical function (for example, paralysis, blindness, or inability to swallow). This loss of function is involuntary, but diagnostic tests show no organic cause.
