EXAMPLES OF ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS
Knowledge of:
Ability to:
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- Conducts intake assessments through interviews with patients and relatives to gather case history.
- Plans and provides nursing care for patients.
- Makes nursing diagnosis of the medical and emotional status of patients and recommends treatment options.
- Consults with psychiatrists and other behavioral health staff in designing appropriate treatment plans for clients.
- Administers and notes reactions to psychotropic drugs and other medications.
- Arranges further medical attention when necessary.
- Assists the client in understanding the nature of emotional disturbances and accepting the need for treatment.
- Assists in maintaining a safe and secure environment for staff and patients.
- Test for vital signs of pain and ensures treatments of pain.
- Documents all patient information on medical charts and follows physician's written orders.
- Maintains patient confidentiality.
- Maintains accurate records and documentation of patient treatments, immunizations and laboratory results according to standard medical recordkeeping.
- Performs administrative assignments such as filing, answering phones, typing, and completing progress notes in the computer system.
- Provides courteous, high quality service to patients and members of the public by personally responding to requests for service or making appropriate referral.
Knowledge of:
- Professional nursing principles, procedures, and techniques used in the care and treatment of psychiatric patients.
- Social, psychological, and physical factors of mental and emotional disorders.
- Medical and psychological terminology.
- Medications, including psychotropic drugs, and effects on psychiatric patients.
- Control, preparation and administration of medications.
- State of California laws and regulations for the nursing profession.
- Regulations pertaining to psychiatric nursing and the treatment of the mentally and emotionally disturbed patients.
- Theories, principles, and techniques of group and individual psychotherapy.
- Symptoms and behavior patterns of emotionally disturbed mentally ill patients.
- Medical and psychiatric emergency procedures.
- Basic computer programs.
Ability to:
- Apply professional nursing care principles and procedures in the evaluation and treatment of psychiatric patients.
- Develop interpersonal therapeutic relationships with psychiatric patients.
- Keep accurate written charts and records of patient activities and progress.
- Comply with laws, rules, regulations, protocols, and procedures.
- Use professional judgment to ascertain and to apply appropriate intervention techniques with patients in crisis.
- Communicate effectively with a variety of individuals and function calmly in situations, which require a high degree of sensitivity, tact, and diplomacy.
- Provide prompt, efficient, and responsive service.
- Exercise appropriate judgment in answering questions and releasing information; analyze and project consequences of decisions and/or recommendations.
- Communicate effectively orally and in writing.
- Requires the ability to sit at a desk for long periods of time and intermittently walk, stand, stoop, kneel, crouch and reach while performing office duties: lift and/or move light weights; use hands to finger, handle or feel objects, tools or controls.
- Must be able to maintain effective audio, visual discrimination and perception needed for making observations, communicating with others, reading and writing, and operating office equipment.
- Must be able to use a telephone to communicate verbally and a keyboard to communicate through written means, to review information and enter/retrieve data, to see and read characters on a computer screen.
- Requires the strength and stamina to perform clinical duties.