Abstract
Psychological Nursing is a nursing specialty that deals with and care for people with mental distress or mental health illnesses like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, dementia or depression. Registered psychological mental health nurses work with families, groups, communities and individuals of all ages attending to their health needs. In this specialty, nurses receive intense training in psychological therapies. They deal with demanding behavior and psychiatric medication administration. Traditionally, mentally ill people in the society were removed and placed in asylums, indefinitely, patients inside the mental health system were required to take compliant roles in management of their own care and decision making was to the professionals. Today, that is not the case, people with mental illnesses reside within the community making it vital for mental health care nurses to be trained for the need of integrating the mentally ill into the society and reduce the stigma attached to the mentally ill. This paper focusses on this specialty
Psychological Nursing is a nursing specialty that deals with and care for people with mental distress or mental health illnesses like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, dementia or depression. Registeredpsychological mental health nurses work with families, groups, communities and individuals of all ages attending to their health needs. In this specialty, nurses receive intense training in psychological therapies. They deal with demanding behavior and psychiatric medication administration.
Traditionally, mentally ill people in the society were removed and placed in asylums, indefinitely, patients inside the mental health system were required to take compliant rolesin management of their own care and decision making was to the professionals. Today, that is not the case, people with mental illnesses reside within the community making it vital for mental health care nurses to be trained for the need of integrating the mentally ill into the society and reduce the stigma attached to the mentally ill.
Psychiatric nurses are the largest group of staff that are involved in mental health care provision for people with this illnesses. Therefore, to make sure that the mental health care service providers abide by legislation, the PMHN has a nursing plan of care and diagnosis, then implements the full nursing process, and at the end it evaluates its effectiveness. The Psychiatric Mental Health Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (PMH-APRNs) offers primary care services to the mental health patients.PMH-APRNs does assessing, diagnostics, and treatment of families and individuals with mental disorders or have a potential for suffering from such disorders or illnesses with a full scope of their therapeutic skills, which including the medication inscription and psychotherapy administration.PMH-Advanced Practice Registered Nurses often own corporations and private practices, they also consult with corporations, communities, groups and legislators.
Advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) earn doctoral or master’s degrees in psychiatric-mental health nursing, they apply the nursing process in assessing, diagnosing and treating families and individuals with psychiatric disorders, for such like disorders, they also identify risk factors.They also sometimes contribute to quality improvement, policy development, healthcare reforms, and practice evaluation. As a nurse practitioner or a Clinical Nurse,this exercise of the psychiatric mental health nurse (PMHN) Specialist is usually considered as an advanced specialty.
Through the APRN Consensus Model, all mental health care nurses will be academically prepared for the provision of mental health care services, illness diagnosis, promotion and treatment across a lifespan.Sub-specialties of psychological nursing include; forensics, gerontological-psychiatric nursing,adolescent mental health nursing or substance use disorders.Some registered nurses specialize in consultation-liaison role, which include provision of consultation and services to families and individuals with many and complicatedphysical and mental health problems. Others do specialize in integrative, collaborative health care position with providers of primary health care.
Nursing interventions can be divided into different categories like biological and Physical interventions, in this intervention Psychiatric medication is commonly used and many psychiatric nurses are usually involved in administration of medicine, both in intramuscular injection or by oral form. Nurses monitor for response and side effects to the administered medical treatments through assessments. The nurses also offer medication information so that, if possible, the person under care are able to make informed choices, using availability of best evidence.
Electroconvulsive therapy is another intervention done by psychiatric nurses where the nurses are involved in electroconvulsive therapy treatment administration. They also assist in the recovery from the treatment and preparation. This treatment is used in small proportion and when only other treatments have been exhausted. Psychosocial intervention is also anintervention techniquedelivered by psychiatric nurses, it includes; psychotherapy interventions like family therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, other less not commonly used intervention under this are psychodynamic approaches or milieu therapy.
Spiritual intervention is another technique used in physiological nursing whose basis of approach involves looking at mental distress or illness from a spiritual crisis perspective. This intervention focuses on the development of a sense of purpose, hope and meaning for the patient in their current experience of life. This intervention involves listening to the patient’s story and helping the patient connect to God, a greater whole, through use of prayer or meditation. This experience may be a religious one or non-religious one, this always depends on the patient’s own spirituality. Spiritual interventions, alongside psychosocial interventions, always emphasize on the importance of engagement.
One may choose to the study of psychological nursing because it is a study of our day to day life, which helps us understand the reason we do the things we do. Other few things it helps us with are prejudice, our emotions and stress. Psychology can help us understand how to handle stress and why it happens since people are different in many ways in handling situations, this study helps us learn how to control our reactions to situations. Psychological knowledge is very important in the nursing field since it involves the study of the brains behavior. It is important for a nurse when dealing with a patient to know their medical symptoms, as well as psychological symptoms.
References
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Boyd, M. (2008). Psychiatric nursing: Contemporary practice. New York: Wolters Kluwer Health.
Frisch, N., & Frisch, L. E. (2006). Psychiatric mental health nursing. New York: Delmar/Thomson Learning.
Stuart, G. W., & Sundeen, S. J. (2005). Principles and practice of psychiatric nursing. Michigan: Mosby.
