Psychiatric Nurse

Psychiatric Registered Nurse — Houston Behavioral Healthcare Hospital

Houston, TX | August 2023 – Present

• Managed daily caseloads of 6 high-acuity psychiatric patients in a 24-bed acute inpatient unit, performing psychiatric assessments and care planning with 99.5% accuracy.
• Administered psychotropic and therapeutic medications to 35+ patients daily using Pyxis automated systems, achieving a 100% adherence rate and zero medication errors.
• Led crisis intervention and CPI de-escalation protocols, reducing patient restraint use by 42% and self-harm incidents by 30% on the unit over a 12-month period.
• Coordinated with a multidisciplinary clinical team of 9 psychiatrists, social workers, and therapists to coordinate discharge plans, reducing patient readmission rates by 18%.

Staff Nurse - Psychiatric Unit — Harris County Psychiatric Center

Houston, TX | October 2020 – July 2023

• Delivered direct mental health care to 7 acute psychiatric patients per shift, monitoring clinical indicators and conducting 15+ daily mental status evaluations.
• Facilitated 12 psychoeducational groups weekly on medication compliance and coping strategies for patients, improving post-discharge care compliance scores by 25%.
• Precepted and oriented 5 newly hired registered nurses and 8 nursing students on behavioral health protocols and HIPAA standards, reducing onboarding time by 15%.
• Audited 120+ clinical records monthly for nursing quality assurance, identifying documentation gaps and increasing unit compliance from 82% to 96% within 18 months.

Psychiatric assessment, Crisis intervention, Psychopharmacology, De-escalation protocols, Care planning, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Patient education, Epic EHR, Cerner Millennium, HIPAA compliance, Pyxis systems, Diagnostic screening, Medication reconciliation, Multidisciplinary collaboration, Patient advocacy

Behavioral De-escalation & Restraint Reduction Program

Role: Clinical Lead Nurse

Tools: Epic EHR, Excel, Microsoft Teams

Co-designed and implemented a proactive de-escalation workflow using CPI techniques on a 24-bed psychiatric unit, reducing restraint incidents by 55% over 12 months.

Suicide Risk Screening Standardization Project

Role: Unit Quality Representative

Tools: Cerner Millennium, Confluence, Visio

Standardized the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) workflow in the EHR, training 45 clinical staff members and reducing assessment documentation errors by 38%.

• Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing Certification (PMH-BC) (2022)
• Registered Nurse (RN) License (2020)

• Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Conversational)
• Professional Memberships: American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA), Texas Nurses Association
• Availability: 2 weeks notice