IDD
I predominately work adolescent psych, but often get floated to our acute units when need be. I genuinely do enjoy what I do. I feel like I make a difference in a lot of kid’s lives and I support them to the best of my ability. Lately I’ve been absolutely hating my job and it’s for no reason other than the massive influx of IDD patients we’ve had. It’s absolutely demoralizing and exhausting to have these sorts of patients for a month or more at a time, where all we do is restrain and medicate them, often multiple times in one day. They can’t process anything, they can’t adequately verbalize what they want or need, I can’t take my attention off of them for a second before they start hurting themselves or someone else. They never improve either, the only reason we keep having them is because of EMTALA. I don’t hate people with IDD, I’m just so burnt out of receiving them as patients when I do not work at the proper facility for that; and the lack of resources in my city deeply exacerbates this problem. Anybody else go through something similar?
Again, I don’t hate people with IDD, I just recognize in myself that there is very little that I am able to do for them and the great resources it takes to provide care from them detracts from helping out the rest of the patients in the unit.