I live in South Florida, I am currently enrolled in the Psych Mental Health Practitioner Program, I am a Registered Nurse, I work in a Psychiatric Hospital.

RESPONSE – PEER POST NO. 1

Thanks for sharing your views and experiences regarding core competencies of health professions. The competencies you mention are important for any nurse, whether they work in mental health or not. The ability to provide patient-centered nursing care is especially important in the practice of psychiatric nurses, as patients may have complex mental issues or be at greater risk. Mental health nurses can provide patient-centered treatment by using recovery-oriented approaches. These methods encourage patients to be active participants in their care and support them as they achieve their goals. This approach has been shown to improve both patient satisfaction and outcomes (Davidson et. al.,2012).

Your observation is also true that mental health nurses may find it challenging to work in interprofessional teams, because they have differing views on mental healthcare. But research shows that collaboration between professionals can help improve mental health outcomes for patients, even those who have complex issues. In order to promote effective interdisciplinary collaborative work, nurses should use communication techniques such as SBAR, (situation, backround, assessment, and recommendation), and teach-back in order to reduce errors and improve understanding (Lega et. al., 2018).

References:

Davidson, L., Bellamy, C., Guy, K., Miller, R., & Mezey, M. (2012). Recovery-oriented Mental Health Service Delivery in the VA: Innovations and Lessons Learned. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 35(6): 437-444.

Lega, F., van der Wulp, I., & Spreeuwenberg, P. (2019). Understanding SBAR communication in healthcare organizations: A review of research on the situation-background-assessment-recommendation communication model. Journal of Healthcare Management. 64(5). 329-343.

Swanson, J. W., Swartz, M. S., Elbogen, E. B., Van Dorn, R. A., Wagner, H. R., & Moser, L. A. (2012). The reduction in coercive crises interventions and psychiatric advance directives. Journal of Mental Health 21(3): 270-277.

REPLY TO POST 2:

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and experience regarding core competencies in health professions training. You are right that evidence-based nursing is important, because it ensures that the patients get efficient and effective care. Use the PICOT Framework (Population, Intervention, Comparison, OUTCOME, Time) as a guide to help formulate questions for nursing and find relevant evidence. This framework can help nurses identify the best available evidence to support clinical decision-making (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015).

You are right to say that nursing quality improvement can be crucial for improving patient outcomes. Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles (PDSAs) are a great way to improve nursing quality. They can be used to determine areas for improvements, create and implement solutions and then evaluate the effectiveness of those solutions (Institute for Healthcare Improvement 2022). In addition, nurses can also use tools for quality improvement such as Pareto charts and fishbone diagrams to analyse data and find the root cause of problems. (Khan, et. al., 2019.)

References:

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (2022). What to do. How to improve. https://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/HowtoImprove/default.aspx

Khan, S. H., Siddique, M. A., Saleem, H., & Khan, U.