On Saturday I was on-call again at the hospital. At 8:10 I received a call from Behavioral Health Services saying they had a patient who is in the lock-down unit who needed a chaplain. So I responded. Behavioral Health is a unit like no other, as it deals primarily with psychological health issues. I learned that this patient was admitted against his will after attempting suicide the night before, that he was unstable and in lock-down. I went in to the lock down unit after reading his chart and learned that he was in the shower so I waited for him in the lounge with the other patients who are also on lock-down. The experience was quite surreal. I was in there for about twenty minutes before meeting with the patient and I found myself so intrigued by what I was witnessing with the other patients. Some were pacing and talking to themselves. One was on a phone crying hysterically with cuts and wounds on her face. I felt like I could sit and watch them for hours. There was music playing loudly and two television sets turned on to Saturday morning cartoons. Each week we have to write a verbatim, which is a write up on a meeting we have with a patient and we're supposed to write, verbatim, what was said in the meeting. These are very challenging assignments because it's difficult to remember exactly how the interaction went. Then we discuss the verbatims in our group time. We analyze and assess and question each others' responses. We learn a lot about ourselves and what we bring into the meetings with patients. I had a partial verbatim attached here but I decided to remove it for integrity reasons. Sorry.
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