I began my psychiatric nursing career working as a behavioral technician on a unit for criminally insane men. I worked there for two years and was even promoted to lead tech in charge of making the assignments for all the technicians for the shift.

Other shifts and other units were sending staff members to the ER at least every few months related to aggressive incidents. Not us. Only thing was a guy had a stroke near when I was starting and while I think the job did do it to him, I think it happened over the many years before I worked there.

Two months before I left I sustained the worst injury I ever did at that job taking care of criminally insane men …I shut my own finger in a door.

I was rushing too much while grabbing hygiene / shower supplies for a guy one morning. Big heavy solid wood heavy latch and hinge with a long metal strike plate running top to bottom psych ward door. The tip of my finger swelled up twice as big, the nail turned black and eventually popped off. Looked weird as shit for a few months.

Meanwhile one time I was helping separate two guys where one was trying to bite the other guys face off and I kinda blacked out for most of it but I do remember seeing the other guys jaw working trying to gnaw at the guy I was holding. Anyway apparently there was a point where I was under both of them on the floor because like three people came into the restraint room while I was with face-bitey to ask how I was and as the adrenaline wore off it turned out I was a little scuffed up and bruised up…

But holy shit did shutting my finger in that door hurt so damn bad I legit thought I was going to lose the finger and it took over a month to heal!