MENTAL HEALTH NURSING

Mental Health Nursing

Mental Health Nursing

Many consumer organizations and professional mental health services advise nurses or private care at patient's home in order to better take care of the patient at a home surrounding, or perhaps to save the hospital bills for some. What ever the case might be, this new way of helping people with mental illness make the difficult transition from hospital to community saved more than $12 million (in a 4-city research) through shorter hospital stays while improving how patients function. This way of treatment saves the most money and is most beneficial when targeted at individuals who say they are lonely. The stay of professional staff at the place of the patient not only allows for maximum amount of 'care-time' but also facilitates a bond between the two which at the least cures their loneliness.

Commitment to nurse-patient relationships is being fostered in a number of health initiatives. However, it is questionable how far this can be achieved while financial efficiency is foremost in health care management thinking. The rhetoric of partnership cannot be fully realized under such economic constraints. Healthcare institutions are supposed to be financially viable, but without compromising patient satisfaction. Furthermore, the demands of an informed population and society's mandate on nurses to deliver holistic care require nurses to become, as Denner (1995) stated, more than a nurse. Consequently, nurses are engaging in higher education and expanding their practice dimensions, including interpersonal skills development, thereby enhancing their competency to deliver holistic care.

The key element for the nurse-patient relationship is to develop caring relationships with the patients that are sensitive to diverse personal, socio-cultural, and contextual characteristics, which encourages those patients to assume primary responsibility for health care decisions, and in which the nurse functions as advocate and advisor. These kinds of relationships are not totally social but are reciprocal relationships in which that which is important to the client matters to the nurse. Caring nurses respect the culture, values, and beliefs of clients and consider the client's context when planning care; emphasizes those patients and their families should have primary responsibility for health care decisions.

However, professional boundary violation can undermine therapeutic relationships. Nurse education therefore needs to include input on maintaining appropriate professional boundaries to combat this detrimental effect. The essence of nursing is reflected in nurse-patient interpersonal relationships and their therapeutic benefits, despite multiple organizational and financial constraints. The enormous benefits of such relationships must be valued and visible. Only then can nurse-patient relationships really be called `therapeutic partnerships'.

This kind of relationship requires much professionalism; knowledge and practicing experience for the nurse, so the Guideline Development Panel (GDP) for the nursing best practice guideline for Establishing Therapeutic Relationships strongly urges organizations or practice settings to pay considerable attention to the following recommendations (NBPG, 2001):

The nurse must acquire the necessary knowledge to participate effectively in therapeutic relationships.

Establishment of a therapeutic relationship requires reflective practice. This concept includes the required capacities of: self awareness, self-knowledge, empathy, awareness of boundaries and limits of ...