I Cared For Serial Killers And Psychopaths In High Security Hospital | Minutes With | @LADbible​

i remember the first week my children said can you go up to the toilets there and just check on that patient and i went up and the next minute he had me by the neck and he was trying to strangle me and it was fight or flight [Music] how and why did you decide to start a career in mental health i left school with no qualifications and i just took a part-time job at a cash and carry store i remember a chap coming up with his family to look at a radio and i went up onto the ladder to get this radio down and uh just as i came down the chat collapsed and banged his head on the glass cabinet and unknown to me it had a heart attack and he had died right out and i thought throughout that for for quite a few months after um i felt that i could have done something and it was my uh manager who was a ex-retired mental health nurse who said to me paul it's really playing you up you know why don't you go down the route of nursing and uh it was a hospital called saint lawrence's in bobbin cornwall and i applied for this job i didn't tell my family because they probably thought oh my gosh because i was a bit of a rebel in the family and i went for the interview and a couple of days later i received this letter to say that i've been accepted as a nursing assistant as i went in on my first day i i really grew up it really made me think oh my gosh this is a different world all together and they put me on a ward that was extremely busy um it was an admission ward uh where patients came in and they were assessed um but eventually i worked on most wards in saint lawrence's what kind of illnesses were you dealing with at saint lawrence the kind of illnesses patients had were schizophrenia manic-depressive depression ocd anxiety and of course not forgetting uh back then you know some 40 years ago you would have what they call back then uh by the lay person as a village idiot who maybe has gone out and smashed up a telephone kiosk and has become a bit of a problem in the community they were actually sent to st lawrence's and they'd been there for a long time you were very young when you started how did it feel to be there surrounded by people with this quite severe mental health issues it was quite harrowing to be honest with you i remember the first week my charger said can you go up to the toilets there and just check on that patient and i went up and the next minute he had me by the neck and we had white coats on um and he was trying to strangle me and it was fight or flight you know i it really shook me up and i came out and i thought well one thing here don't leave yourself you know don't become complacent there was a lot of violence i mean it didn't happen every day but you got to realize that you know on each ward with that volume of patience um living under one roof there would be tension and of course the illnesses and if somebody's paranoid or delusional there are cases where um they think you're that you're after them you're going to attack them so they would attack you first and i remember talking to a patient who i had a good therapeutic relationship with and uh this he just stared at me and i thought this is something's going on here and i said to him are you okay no he said uh the the voices are telling me to kill you and it was so real to him you know you have to be a certain person to go into nursing and those that aren't the certain people they stand out you know and i've i often had that as a ward manager recruiting staff you could just tell the you know if somebody's empathetic and uh they're a caring person and there's a line you know you've got to be you've got to be strong and you've got to you know there's boundaries with patients etc but it's all a skill all these are skills you learn over time you know and and when you leave your shift it's about leaving it all behind and not taking it home when did you make a decision to move to broadmoor hospital and why did you do that um on my last ward at st lawrence's hospital we had a lot of patients who had been at braumer hospital for some i mean back then people were there for 30 40 years some are there for life i thought well you can't go any higher than this you know i've worked in a few hospitals but this is the hospital where patients can't be managed anywhere else that's why they go to high secure hospitals so basically broadmoor is the place where a lot of criminals are held just because they otherwise present a threat to society and they need constant psychiatric support is that right well that is correct but um not all of them i mean what you get is you get um say somebody was sentenced to prison for 10 15 years if they had a relapse if they had any mental health issues and they were category a etc they would come to a high secure hospital whether that's brought more ramp than ashworth etcetera and there they would be treated under that security with medication once they uh became well they would transfer back to prison so it's hopping from one to the other and some people just continue to do that you know people who have been sentenced to life what kind of criminals did you meet at broadmoor well i mean you know everybody knows who's who's been at broadmoor and who was there but um you know it's it's the usual ronnie cray and peter sutcliffe there's quite a few of them which you what you would call the infamous patience of uh broadmoor but i have to say if i give you an example you know we had one patient um who was filming he he was in a lot of soaps etc with no names given and he went off set he became quite psychotic and he went off and um he killed somebody on the street and he was sentenced to broad war and i remember all the work we did with that chap and then there's some coverage that came up about five years later in one of the the tabloids and um you could just see how he deteriorated through that coverage it was just like oh my gosh you know this is happening a real effect on him you know there was quite a lot of examples of different um criminals that were in psychiatric hospitals who created a lot of art like charlie bronson or ronnie craig i think that's the the the only means at that time that they can get through to people especially the staff you know i know a lot of psychologists have said art is the a huge theme when it comes to breaking down those barriers with a patient and building that trust that's why an art therapist is so paramount on a unit and it's about somebody who's who if i give you an example is quite depressed and they won't speak you know there's no communication going on um they'll do it in their picture they draw something and you can ask you can go in depth with it you know what does this mean what you put this here what does that mean what was the security like and what was the training like you're you're trained to use um what was called control and restraint back then and that i believe came from british airways at the very beginning because of passengers on flights who were becoming problematic and that that carried over and the high secure hospitals did that first so you are trained in that and so if somebody um attacked you you have those those uh different holes that you put on et cetera it's all because it's safe you know as nobody gets hurt and then i went on to do the shield training so that's like what the prisons do so if somebody did have a weapon you would bring the shields out and um restrain somebody with the shields that was very interesting because nobody likes violence nobody wants violence and somebody who's unwell who doesn't realize that they're doing these things it's about making it safe you know because people many many years ago have actually died through restraints you've always got to think a couple of steps ahead you would never go in a room first a patient's room you would always have somebody with you you would never leave yourself in a corner there's been times and i know there were two patients one morning fighting in the day room and the alarm bells went and everybody came in and i actually ended up on the patients holding the patient's head this is all through your techniques that you were taught and we went into the seclusion room and the seclusion rooms used at the last resort it's about bringing somebody down who's maybe gone from not to 10 in an arousal state with aggression and i remember holding the head and you always numbered everybody you wouldn't call them the staff their names because you might have somebody with the same names and i said number one leave the room and they went out the room and i had the head and we turned them around so i had the legs then number two leave the room and just as i was about to you know spring backwards to be caught by the staff the door closed and for whatever reason nobody really forgot this there that um they thought i'd actually got out i was out of the room and they shut the door of course there's the patient who jumped up off the bed and to me all i could think of is like hostage you're now a hostage now it was it seemed like forever but it wasn't it was maybe 10 15 seconds because that was enough to make me think oh my gosh you know how did you manage to get out of that one um that one there i actually they pulled me out and they went back in and restrained the patient again and all came out and um i think the staff just couldn't believe it but it's still talked about today you know it's one of those incidents which i've seen a few and being involved in that always stayed with me you know because we had hostage training as well and when you go deep into that it's um it can be quite scary what would be the most disturbing things you witnessed at broadmoor hospital you think cutting when somebody's cut their throat that that's i mean it doesn't have to be bromo it can be any other hospital but that's quite something you know you deal with it but it's it's something and obviously when somebody's um hung themselves that's that's quite uh especially when you've got somebody so young i've come across a few that have been very young and you just think it makes you feel how lucky you are when you leave a shift you know when you've got somebody talking to you and smiling and having a good job there's no there's no indication that you're they're going to go and do something you know usually you can see triggers with somebody you see triggers like their hands or the way they're looking you know that patient inside out really um but when somebody doesn't do that and they're happy go lucky and then five minutes later they're they've they've got a sheet around their neck you think there's no indication there you wouldn't have put that person on observations because they didn't need them you know and what i learned through my career with hangings etcetera is that if they're going to do it they'll do it they really will whether it's in the hospital or the grounds they'll do it but there's been lots of things throughout the career where you thought oh my gosh you know um you just wouldn't see that anywhere else you know and then you go you'd finish your shift after a horrific shift i mean not every day's like that and you go into the supermarket and you'd have a young lady going afternoon how was your day you know you think if only you knew and you do have a bit of guilt you think all the time all the all the input we've given that person and you you feel like you've you've let them down you know have it ever happened to anyone who you were kind of connected to yeah oh yeah yeah i mean you know when you're when you're especially at bloomberg when you're um nursing there you are given so many patients to look after so that would be care plans um reviews you they're named nurse so you do build up that rapport they call it unconditional positive regard where you've got to put everything to one side i'll give you an example of that if you know a patient's being transferred up to you and you have read the notes that can have an effect before the person's walked on the unit if you haven't read the notes and you build a rapport and read them later you seem to have that connection more of a connection it's all those different things like silence is the most powerful thing where some people would be so uncomfortable with it that's a time for reflection for the person to think about what you've said or for me as well it's about um all the different things you would ask and what you wouldn't ask i mean you you have to challenge some patients but you wouldn't just go in on your own and challenge them whatever it may be you'd make sure that you had support with you what do you say you liked most about your job there's lots of funny things over time you know when you've got to have that sense of humor and i have to say the patients would have a real laugh with you as well you know and that's what it was all about but the chap who went running to the toilet and i said are you all right oh he said i've got the the runs and he went off to the toilet and i thought you've been gone a while so um i went up to the toilet and i shouted the chap's name we'll just call him joe i said joe are you all right he said well no he said the doctors have given me some souls and that's not working out very well and i said salt what do you mean souls well he said i went to the ward round and instead of prescribing me medication he said just take some souls so when i he i said open the door a minute open the door of course there's feces all over the walls and that i said what kind of soaps did you take he said somersaults and i thought that was really you know from somebody who's yeah there yeah why did you make a decision to leave your career of psychiatric nurse um through 35 years i could retire and i had a good pension and a lump sum and i thought it was time to go but i didn't leave mental health i left as a ward manager i retired got my 35 years and continued to work voluntary um in lots of organizations i've always been linked uh to to mental health always you know and by going around doing surveys around the united kingdom meeting so many different people and you know it's fantastic yeah do you miss being at the hospital sometimes i do when i go and visit units and support staff uh it takes you all back being on the units and patients will always come up to you not even knowing you and they'll say oh hello paul pleased to meet you and all that and you can tell you're a nurse you know it's quite amazing really but you never lose those skills you can build you know you can have that rapport right away you can converse and that's the biggest thing in nursing is getting through to somebody but i always see it as a privilege to work somewhere like that absolute privilege you know if you can just change somebody a little bit like that each day that's good enough for me because you can't expect everything you know people don't get well over overnight but if you make that little bit of happiness um and and uh make their day worthwhile that that's good for me and that's why i was in the job [Music] yeah he said you know he said um you know um you'll read him well and um you've got this this diagnosis schizoaffective disorder i kind of thought my life was over as soon as i've got that diagnosis

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Id: -39j2TG9hAw

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 07 2022