The Global Issue Of Mental Health And Shortage Of Nursing Staff

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.

Newell, R. Gournay, K (2000) Mental Health Nursing - An evidence based approach. London: Churc

Contemporary Challenges in Mental Health Care Provision and Management 2 B73M20 Cohort 09/09 Student ID: 20328

I work at the veterans’ affair hospitals in Houston and in November 2011, Veteran Health Administration (VHA) committed to developing an outpatient mental health staffing model which comprised an interdisciplinary care team to ensure adequate general outpatient mental health care .

As nurses, it extremely important for us to have an understanding of mental health so we can decrease the stigma in the healthcare profession. There shouldn’t be a difference between a “psychiatric nurse” and a “general nurse”. Since over 50% of the population suffers from a mental illness, both professions should be equally educated and sensitive towards health care issues.

Mental health nurses work in many areas such as, hospitals, clinics, schools, prisons, and some government agencies. Depending on the nurses’ shifts, some who work full time work a total of forty hours a week. Nurses who work in clinics or hospitals have rotating shifts, meaning evenings and weekends. During the “student” stage of nursing need to be able to understand the patients origins. A disadvantage to this job would be, depending on whom nurses work with, this job can become stressful. The patients the nurses work with can be emotional in several ways including being aggressive. Traveling to the patients house may be required and other various community sites.

In this assignment I will be discussing Adult Nursing and Mental Health Nursing and issues regarding consent. Consent is important within all fields of nursing as it is essential to conduct any medical procedures. The Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Conduct (NMC,2008) states that all healthcare professionals must presume that all patients have the mental capacity to accept or deny medical treatments after being given all information which may be needed. However there may be some instances where consent cannot be obtained. An example of this is if the patient is in a medical emergency and may be unconscious or if the patient lacks the mental capacity to make a knowledgeable choice. In this situation treatment would be

In the United States the Mental Health Care field is one of the most underserved areas of healthcare. The mental healthcare field faces many challenges to the proper treatment of patients from both a societal and professional standpoint. From a societal perspective a negative stereotype is associated with patients seeking psychiatric care. Patients seeking care are often labeled as defective or damaged. Add in the complication that most patients with mental illness appear to be normal, accepting that someone is ill without outward symptoms can also be difficult for a society to understand. From a professional perspective the challenges within the mental health care industry include personal prejudice, staffing issues, and problems with coordinating care. The combination of these factors has a direct negative impact on the willingness of individuals suffering from mental illness in seeking the care needed to treat the symptoms of mental illness.

Developing innovation approaches not only can resolve the world-wide shortage of mental health nurses but can arouse interest to those professionals who are already within workplace seeking further education. It has been recommended that opitimestic work environment and appropriatedly encouraged staff can affect nurse

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

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).

About one-quarter of all American adults suffer from a mental health disorder in any given year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Mental health is an important component of overall health and wellness. Treatment options often include medication and psychotherapy. Mental health nurses help patients who suffer from mental illness to recover their mental health so that they can live to their fullest potential. For example, mental health nurses work in a variety of settings, such as, psychiatric hospitals, substance abuse treatment programs, home healthcare services, community mental health agencies, and private practice. This paper will give a description of my clinical experience at a psychiatric hospital.

This writer is going to explore two different western nursing theories that were shaped by philosophy, politics, history and society and view the revolutionary application of the theories in the modern world. In the beginning of a journey to a psychiatric nursing career, a student needs to consider nurses of the past, and present, and the theories they developed. Nursing is constantly evolving and the nursing theories evolve in response to society’s evolution.(Barker,2009) Historically politics shaped society, and its view of the mentally ill. In the past, psychiatric nursing relied on the physicians/psychiatrists biomedical theory to mental illness. This writer suggests that today in response to the changing world

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

Modern nursing is a rewarding, but challenging, career choice. The modern nurse's role is not limited only to assist the doctor in procedures, however. Instead, the contemporary nursing professional takes on a partnership role with both the doctor and patient as advocate caregiver, teacher, researcher, counselor, and case manager. The caregiver role includes those activities that assist the client physically, mentally, and emotionally, while still preserving the client's dignity. In order for a nurse to be an effective caregiver, the patient must be treated in a holistic manner. Within the subject of nursing, there are often times in which different aspects of the practice must be analyzed by using primary research from other scholars. Nursing scholarship is vital to the profession, as we have seen, in order for the modern nurse to remain current with scholarship and practice. At the very core of this paradigm, though, is the manner in which the blend of art and science in nursing will be expressed to others, to the next generation, and through pedagogical theory (Alligood & Tomey, 2002). To do this, however, requires a new approach to the paradigm of nursing leadership strategic thinking, planning and action and above all appropriate integration of a more holistic and multidisciplinary approach to professional nursing.