Psychiatric Nursing Practice

Psychiatric Nursing Practice

John Hopkins was the first school of nursing to include a course in psychiatric nursing in its curriculum. The first psychiatric nursing practice was primarily custodial and focused on nutrition, hygiene and activity.

The role of psychiatric nurses expanded as physical therapies for the treatment of mental disorders were developed. Treatments such as insulin shock therapy, psychosurgery and electroconvulsive therapy required nurses to use their medical-surgical skills more extensively.

Psychiatric nursing practice’s areas of concern pertaining to actual or potential mental health problems are some of the following – problems related to emotions such as anxiety, anger, loneliness and grief and behaviors and mental states that indicate that the client is a danger to self or others.

To sum it all, a psychiatric-mental health nurse collects client health data, analyzes the data, develops a plan of care that prescribes interventions to attain outcomes and implements them in the plan of care. Other responsibilities involve counseling interventions to assist clients in improving or regaining their coping abilities, fosters mental health and preventing mental illness and disability.

Psychiatric nurses as therapists are particularly suited to working with those with severe mental illness in the context of daily activities, focusing on the here and now to meet each person’s psychosocial needs. In time, psychiatric nursing practice was institutionalized and added to nursing curricula. Standards of care of clients were developed and practiced.

When legal problems arise, these professional standards are used to determine safe and acceptable practice and to assess the quality of care.

Professional Registered Nurse Education

There are various educational routes for becoming a professional registered nurse (RN). Initially, hospital schools of nursing were developed to educate nurses to work within those institutions. As nursing increasingly defined its own body of knowledge, formalized education processes were introduced to ensure a consistent level of education in institutions. Such consistency was also necessary for RN licensure.

Currently, the most frequent route you can choose to become a licensed nurse is through completion of an associate degree or baccalaureate degree program. Graduates of both programs are eligible to take the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) to become registered nurses in the state in which they will practice.

The associate degree program is a two-year program that is usually offered by a university or junior college. It focuses on the basic sciences and theoretical and clinical courses related to the practice of nursing. Graduates of this program take the state board examination for RN licensure.

The baccalaureate degree program usually encompasses four years of study in a college or university. The program focuses on the basic sciences and on theoretical and clinical courses, as well as courses in the social sciences, arts and humanities to support nursing theory.

The four-year degree program prepares you for essential knowledge, practice and values, personal qualities and professional behavior for the baccalaureate-educated nurse. A professional registered nurse agrees that nursing education is important to practice and that it must respond to changes in health care provided by scientific and technological advances.

How to Become a Nurse Practitioner

There has been a large increase in the number of nurse practitioner programs and graduates. This was driven in part, perhaps, by the changing health care system, hospital downsizing, increase in ambulatory care and constraints on managed care.

A nurse practitioner (NP) is an advanced practice nurse who has education beyond the bachelor’s degree in a clinical specialty area strongly focused on primary care, though some subspecialties are hospital based. NPs have received specialized training, most often at the master’s level, in diagnosing and treating illnesses and providing health care maintenance.

The keys to the success of the of the nurse practitioner role have been the autonomous yet collaborative nature of the practice, accountability as a direct provider of health care services, emphasis on clinical decision making as a basic clinical skill, focus on health and healthy lifestyles as a foundation of practice and the cost-effective, accessible nature of the practice. These basic attributes of NP practice hold true regardless of setting or specialty focus.

While the performance of such roles bodes well for nursing in general and NPs specifically, there are also some questions about them taking on too much within the health care system. The concern is that if they take on an increasing amount of technical and medical work, then characteristics highly valued in the profession may be threatened like skill in caring and communication.

It is clear that while NPs provide autonomous practice and competent patient management, they also must protect their holistic, caring nursing role.

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