Life as a mental health nurse (2024)

FAQs

What is the daily life of a mental health nurse? ›

What would a typical day look like for a mental health nurse? A typical day can often be intense and could begin with a shift handover, then patient assessment and medication administration, followed by group therapy and counselling sessions, crisis intervention and support, and shift handover and reporting.

“As a mental health nurse, I love learning about people. I love helping people to think through and manage their problems. Build on their strengths and talents as well as creating hope and direction with them too. Being a nurse is very often great fun.

In mental health nursing, a lot of your interventions will be based on what you say to patients. The whole concept of therapeutic communication is often difficult for students to master because, honestly, it's not how we naturally communicate in our day-to-day life.

Many accounts described a complex interplay of challenges. The findings extend prior knowledge on MHN experiences. Frequent workplace challenges included violence and aggression from consumers, bullying from colleagues, low staffing levels, and poor skill mix.

Plans and provides nursing care for patients. Makes nursing diagnosis of the medical and emotional status of patients and recommends treatment options. Consults with psychiatrists and other behavioral health staff in designing appropriate treatment plans for clients.

Coping strategies focused on the problem (positive re-evaluation, positive approach, problem solving, and seeking social support) were the most commonly used by the mental health nurses.

Supporting the individual to find their own version of recovery is key. Mental health nurses bring unique expertise to the process of recovery. They remain a key source of advice on what is meaningful for the patient.

A career in mental health can be profound and rewarding, offering a unique opportunity to make a positive impact on individual lives and on society by fostering mental well-being and resilience in others.

Mental health nurses must possess an extensive knowledge of mental illnesses as well as how to assess, diagnose and treat them. They also help create individualized treatment plans for patients, including prescribing medications when necessary.

What qualities make a good mental health nurse? ›

Mental health nurses need to be able to adapt quickly to changing situations while demonstrating clear thinking and a professional approach. This can bring with it no small amount of stress, and some days will be emotionally draining as well as physically.

The biggest risk in mental health nursing is a lack of education and training that could lead to errors in judgment and care. A nurse can make a mistake with treatment or medication, which could cause harm to the patient.

Of those, the three most common diagnoses are anxiety disorders, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

You will be expected to study a minimum of 2,300 hours theory and 2,300 hours practice across the 3 years. The practical placements that you will take throughout this Mental Health Nursing course will be in a variety of health, education and social care settings.

You'll be warm and engaging while showing real empathy with service users and their individual circ*mstances. This may include the social stigma of mental health problems which can be as equally hard to overcome.

Nurses should establish clear boundaries between work and personal life, ensuring that they have dedicated time for themselves and their loved ones. This may involve setting specific hours for work-related tasks, avoiding work-related communication outside of those hours, and prioritizing personal commitments.

PMH RNs and APRNs currently face incredibly high demand for their services. There has been a 58 percent increase in psychiatric RN job openings and a 17 percent increase in psychiatric APRN job opportunities from 2014 to 2015. PMH nurses are the fast- est-growing non-physician specialties in health care.