Issues in mental health nursing
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Issues Ment Health Nurs · Apr 2005
Historical ArticleNursing care in a state hospital before and during the introduction of antipsychotics, 1950--1965.
Oral history methods were used to describe the experiences of American nurses who practiced in a state mental hospital before and during the introduction of antipsychotic medications. The nurses described their responsibilities for supervising staff, administering patient care, and assisting with special psychiatric treatments. They expressed resignation and frustration with trying to provide care despite obstacles such as unqualified physicians, crowded wards, and inadequate personnel and supplies. The nurses adopted a Cartesian approach in which they focused on the patient's body, instead of the patient's mind, and developed camaraderie among nurses through which they found acceptance and were able to continue to do a thankless job.
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Issues Ment Health Nurs · Sep 2004
Barriers to suicide risk management in clinical practice: a national survey of oncology nurses.
Standards of practice identify the nurse's pivotal role in risk detection, assessment, intervention, and management of suicidal patients, but scant research explores the barriers that hinder this role. This study describes the analysis of barriers to suicide risk management from a survey of a random sample of members of a national organization, the Oncology Nursing Society (n = 1200), who participated in a descriptive study exploring nurses' knowledge and attitudes about suicide. The 454 (37%) respondents included respondents from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. ⋯ Barriers to management of suicidal patients included deficits in skill, knowledge, referrals, patient teaching, advocacy, or consultation as well as participants' and religious/other values, uncomfortable feelings, personal experiences, and the weight of professional responsibility. Strategies for intervention include: suicide prevention education, consultation, values clarification, ethical analysis, and conflict resolution and psychosocial support to reduce barriers. Nurses are not alone in their request for more education about suicide prevention; this study confirms earlier research of psychologists and psychiatrists who report they need more education in suicide risk management.
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Issues Ment Health Nurs · Jul 2004
The experience of gatekeeping: a psychiatric nurse in an emergency department.
Emergency departments are increasingly identified as the entry point to mental health services. In the hope of facilitating the flow of psychiatric patients through a general hospital's emergency department, experienced psychiatric nurses were asked to participate in a pilot project in a general hospital in Canada. ⋯ The notion of "gatekeeper" as a metaphor highlights "keeping psychiatric patients out" of an already strained emergency system. As a means to balance fiscal demands with patient care, the EPN inadvertently served to obscure entry for patients with mental illness who were seeking emergency services.
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Issues Ment Health Nurs · Jun 2004
Disconfirming beliefs: the use of poetry to know the lived experience of student nurses in mental health clinicals.
An aesthetic pattern of knowing involves moving beyond classifications and knowing the whole individual. Students are taught to provide holistic care to patients, but instructors evaluate students primarily from a scientific, empirical perspective. ⋯ Five themes and one consistent pattern were identified. Insights and implications of student poetry writing are explored.