Critiquing Research In Mental Health Nursing

This Case Study will be undertaken as a group activity and is designed to deepen your knowledge about mental illnesses, and to test your understanding about the nursing care of people suffering from such conditions. It will also assist you to express your ideas through class presentation and in writing.

For me nursing was not something that I initially intended to do as a career. During elementary school and into high school I contemplated many different career paths such as cosmetology, teaching, psychology, and forensics. It was not till the later years of high school that I started to notice my desire to help other individuals and love of science, health, and different disease processes. My desire to help people has originated from the admiration of my grandfather’s

Critical reflection is an indispensable tool used in evidence based nursing practice. Critical reflection is often a difficult concept to define as all health professionals interpret it in diverse ways. However, one definition of critical reflection is the revision of nursing practice experience so that it can be described, analysed and evaluated to use that knowledge to improve on future practice (Bulman & Schutz, 2013). Critical reflection is essential for nursing practice because it ensures patient safety and provides holistic care. This assignment will discuss in further detail a description of an event, a reflection of thoughts and feelings and an evaluation of the positive and negative sides of the incident from both the nurse's and the patient's viewpoint and the consequences. Followed by an analysis of what can be taken away from the event to further improve future nursing practice as well as what can be done to improve one's own learning and develop an action plan using new knowledge.

Nursing is an excellent career choice, where an individual acquires great gratitude while attending to others necessities. If someone is constantly trying to improve themselves and wanting to be challenged in life, “as nurses, we face tremendous challenges and often see and do things that are extraordinary” (Ulrich xix). By becoming a registered nurse the individual will make a difference. Nursing allows an individual to continuously be benefiting a fellow human being, not only with the patient but with their families as well, having the opportunity to becoming someone especial in the patient’s life. Nursing is a

Hello Students, my name is Teresa Damien MS, APRN-BC. I have been a registered nurse for over a decade and currently practice as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at an academic institution clinically focused in addiction psychiatry. I have worked in multiple areas of nursing over my career prior to mental health that include medical-surgical nursing, respiratory nursing, hospice nursing, home care pedicatric nursing, and nursing education.

Assessing the reasons for starting university and choosing Mental Health Nursing I have to reflect back on my past. Through my two years at college I had to overcome barriers which I feel contribute to the qualities which will allow me to become an effective Mental Health Nurse. In my first year of college I had to emotionally support my family due to my father being ill. This put a strain on my college and I was only able to do work in the hours I was in college. However, I found a way to make it work to ensure everything I did was too a high standard and of good quality. During this period of time I had to construct an effective way of managing my time. On average one individual will use thirteen different strategies for time management, (Dovico.com, 2015) the strategies found most effective was a study guide which helped me plan out how many hours of coursework I needed to complete to ensure my work was off high quality and standard, I found the Open University websites the most useful resource for time management. (Www2.open.ac.uk, 2015)

Why is critical thinking important in nursing? Critical thinking is the essential component and foundation of the profession of nursing. Without one element of critical thinking, the nursing process, we cannot begin to understand or move forward in this great business. RNs must bring with them the skill of critical thinking to make wise decisions and collaborate on the change that will have a positive impact on the future. Also, as the opening vignette shows, many schools have opted to test critical thinking skills before students enter or exit the program (Harrington & Terry, 2009, p.p. 212-213).

For this research paper, the career field that was chosen was ‘pediatric nursing’. Many people would choose this particular career for their love of wellness and of people. Many just love seeing the smile on children’s faces when they say that they feel so much better. People would also choose this career path because of some lifelong skill of dealing with adolescents and children, possibly being an elder child, which is a very important quality of pediatric nurses. Overall, when most people know and feel that someone is well and is happy, it would just make them so glad that they’ve done something to help them in their path to becoming happy and healthy again.

Nurses make decisions daily while preparing and conveying care in their scope of practice. Appropriate and efficacious decision-making includes critical thinking. Critical thinking is a major component in the nursing profession as an essential nursing skill. Critical thinking is examining underlying assumptions, interpreting and evaluating arguments, imagining and exploring alternatives, and developing reflective criticism for the purpose of reaching a reasoned, justifiable conclusion (Sullivan, 2013, p. 100). Additionally, it is also the root of problem solving.

While deciding on the career that I wanted to pursue for the rest of my life, I began looking at job availability and job security. Nursing fulfills both criteria as it is a job that is in high demand and will always be needed in the world, especially in hospitals and nursing care facilities such as nursing homes or rehabilitation centers. One thing that inspired me to become a nurse is that fact that my mother is a nurse. She has always been employed and has had the opportunity to see the functionality of nursing at many different levels and job settings. Always feeling secure about a career choice is something that I value deeply because it ensures me that I will always be able to find a way to provide for myself and my future family.

My passion is in psychiatric nursing. I am very much interested providing psychiatric care to the individuals suffering from chronic and persistent mental illness. Being equipped with over seven years of experience providing intense case management to this population, a non-RN position, I have finally found myself here. I attained my Registered Nursing (RN) license through the Entry Level Masters (ELM) program here at APU. My goal is to add needed competencies and skills to my existing experience as a case manager to be a successful Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP). I find that my newly acquired nursing skills as well as case management proficiencies complement each other very well and are crucial to my future practice as a PMHNP. PMHNP provides care to individuals at risk for and suffering from psychiatric or mental health problems, taking the lifespan approach (from birth to death) (Thomas, 2013).

What is a nurse practitioner? Nurse practitioners are trained to diagnose and treat both physical and mental conditions through comprehensive history taking, physical exams, and ordering and interpretation of diagnostic tests (Yee, Boukous, Cross, & Samuel, 2013). The Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) states that nurse practitioners are registered nurses who are prepared by advanced education to provide primary care including medical procedures that may be required for a specialty area. The purpose of this paper is to reveal to the reader what a nurse practitioner is, providing background information of a mental health practitioner, nursing shortage, effect on the nurses and patients with the shortage of mental

Whitebird, R., Kreitzer, M., Crain, L., Lewis, B. A., Hanson, L. R., & Enstad, C. J. (2011). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for family caregivers: A randomized controlled trial. The Gerontologist, 53(4), 676-686. doi:

During my work placement I noticed that nurses work in a variety of services and are in an ideal position to promote patients’ mental health and wellbeing by helping and empowering them to realise their abilities rather than focusing on their disability or illness (Ruddick,2013).

Clear role definition is essential to the development of the psychiatric nurse. The expanded role of the psychiatric nurse is clearly identified in the literature for many areas of care such for the forensic psychiatric nurse in Lyons (2009), the nurse practitioner in O’Neil, Moore, and Ryan (2008); Kaye et al. (2009) , and for the mental health liaison nurse in Merritt and Procter ( 2010). However, a clear role definition for the generalist nurse is not easily found (Rungapadiachy & Gough, 2004). According to these authors, a definition of the generalist role and its associated behaviors are not easily articulated. Hildegard Peplau, the only psychiatric nursing theorist (McKenna & Slevin, 2008) identifies nursing roles that