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Health sciences and nursing

MENTAL HEALTH ARTICLE ANALYSIS

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Activity One

Findings from ‘Diabetes: Increasing the Knowledge Base of Mental Health Nurses.’ The key words used to search for the mental related issues were:

Diabetes
Mental Health Nursing
Nursing Statistics
Physical Health
Nursing Skills Improvement

Finding articles:

I used the Google search engine to find articles related to the Hemingway et al. (2013). In my search, I identified the most relevant and credible articles from the numerous ones available online. I chose Pignone et al. (2005), which describes interventions to improve health outcomes for patients with low literacy, Shekelle et al. (2006), which covers on the costs and benefits of health information technology. Evidently, I selected other several articles pertaining to the mental health care and diabetes, which are outlined below.

Bibliography

Ciccone, M. M., 2010. Feasibility and Effectiveness of a Disease and Care Management Models in Primary Health Care System for patients with Heart Failure and Diabetes. The Journal of Vascular Health and Risk Management, 6(1), pp. 297-305.

Cloninger, C. R., 2006. The science of well-being: an integrated approach to mental health and its disorders. The Official Journal of World Psychiatry, 5(2), pp. 71-76.

Hemingway, S., et al., 2013. Diabetes: Increasing the Knowledge Base of Mental Health Nurses. British Journal of Medicine, 22(17), pp. 991-996.

Izumi, S., 2013. Quality improvement in Nursing: Administrative Support or Professional Responsibility? Journal of Nursing Forum, 47(4), pp. 260-267.

Joseph, M. L., & Huber, D. L., 2015. Clinical Leadership Development and Education for nurses: Prospects and Opportunities. Journal of Health Leadership, 7(1), pp. 55-64.

Lechasseur, K., & Lazure G, L., 2011. Knowledge mobilized by a critical thinking process deployed by nursing students in practical care situations: a qualitative study. The Journal of Advanced Nursing, 67(6), pp. 1930-1940.

Martensson, G. et al., 2014. Mental health nursing staff’s attitudes towards mental illness: an analysis of related factors. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 21(9), pp. 782-788.

McHale, J., & Felton, A., 2010. Self-harm: what’s the problem? A literature review of the factors affecting attitudes towards self-harm. The Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 17(8), pp. 732-740.

Monahan, J. C., 2015. A Student Nurse Intervention that addresses the Perioperative Nursing Shortage. Journal of Perioperative Practice, 25(11), pp. 230-234.

Papathanasiou, I.V. et al., 2014. Critical Thinking: The Development of an Essential Skill for Nursing Students. Journal of Academy of Medical Sciences of Bosnia and Heregovinia, 22(4), pp. 283-286.

Patel, V., Boyce, N., Collins, P. Y., Saxena, S., & Horton, R., 2011. A renewed agenda for global mental health. Lancet, 378(9801), pp. 1441-2.

Sephel, A., 2011. Digging Deeper: Nurse Excess or Shortage? The effect of a new nurse. Journal of Professional Nursing,27(6), pp. 390- 393.

Sharma, A. et al., 2006. Exercise for Mental Health. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 8(2), pp. 106.

Steaban, L., 2016. Health Care Reform, Care Coordination, and Transformational Leadership. Nurs Adm Q, 40(2), pp. 153-163.

Tofthagen, R., et al., 2014. Mental Health Nurses Experiences of Caring for Patients Suffering from Self-harm. The Journal of Nursing Research and Practice, 2014, 905741

Activity Three

Chosen Article

Hemingway, S., et al., 2013. Diabetes: Increasing the Knowledge Base of Mental Health Nurses. British Journal of Medicine, 22(17), pp. 991-996.

KEY POINTS

Purpose

Explores the professional skills to be acquired by the mental health nurses
Identifies the technologies to be used in physical health assessment
Discusses the role of mental health nurses

Thesis

Previous researches indicated that:

Service users are disinterested in their physical health
Advice and guidance provision to service users helps to maintain health among the population

Method of Research

A pre- and post-test questionnaire was used to evaluate the project
A total of 35 questionnaires were received, comprising responses from 26 student nurses and 9 qualified practitioners

Results

All participants reported that the use of a mental health or learning disability examples helped their understanding of diabetes
19 female and 4 male participants were used to obtain demographic information
The mean obtained pre-score and post-score was 4.76 and 10.26 respectively.
14 respondents were satisfied with the topic delivery and 14 respondents ‘very satisfied’

ARTICLE SUMMARY

Physical health assessment for serious mental illnesses individuals has been neglected for a prolonged period. The mental health nurses and other health practitioners should acquire the necessary skills and qualifications to deal with such patients (Hemingway et al., 2013). The skills can be acquired by the implementation and development of laws and relevant institutions. As such, several health institutes and laws were developed to address issues pertaining to mental health patients such as diabetic and overweight patients (Hemingway et al., 2013). For instance, the University of South West Yorkshire and Huddersfield Partnership Foundation Trust found in the United Kingdom facilitates the acquisition of knowledge and skills to the mental health nurses. The foundation enables the transfer of inter-university skills and knowledge, workshop evaluations and diabetes pre- and post- evaluation. It should be noted that a physical assessment of the public helps to avoid severe conditions such as diabetes and obesity.

Activity Three

How the article relates to the role of a mental health nurse:

Explores the professional skills to be acquired by the mental health nurse
Discusses the demerits in the mental health nursing field
Highlights the improvements in the mental health nursing
Shows the importance of service users’ interest in their services

How the article relates to actual practice:

Highlights the importance of giving service users the necessary attention to their needs
The article also shows the mental health nurse the ways to improve their staff-patient experience

How the article relates to the way, I think about my professional role:

Motivates the mental health nurse to provide quality services to the patients
Lack of confidence in medical care administration might lead to reduced recovery rates among patients

Activity Four

Mental health nurses and related health practitioners need to acquire better skills in the field of mental health illnesses through the physical assessment of the patients. As a result, several mergers such as the physical skills project have been developed to ensure professionalism in the field of mental health nurses (Hemingway et al., 2013). In addition, training and education programs are implemented globally to endure reduced mortality rates among the patients. Mental health illnesses patients have a higher risk of developing physical problems in the future. According to Hemingway et al. (2013), the patient will succumb to the mental illness 10 to 15 years earlier than the general population as well as up to 25 years in the United States since serious mental illness (SMI) patients lack physical checkups in primary and secondary health centres. The scenario is brought about by the lack of specialized mental health nurses and equipment in the health centres.

Nevertheless, SMI patients are likely to die from coronary and respiratory diseases than their healthy counterparts. Strokes, epilepsy, hypertension, and ischemic heart diseases are likely to appear among individuals with SMI due to exposure to the treatment mechanisms that may weaken the patients’ immune system (Hemingway et al., 2013). For instance, SMI patients have a high probability of developing hyperglycemia and weight gain arising from treatment problems. As such, intervening and implementing healthy lifestyle choices in the mental health centres to ensure priority in the physical assessment of the SMI patients, thus helping in the avoidance of the development of other related disorders.

According to Hemingway et al. (2013), 4.5% of the United Kingdom’s population has been diagnosed with diabetes posing a high mortality and morbidity rates in the country. There are two types of diabetes namely type1 diabetes and type11 diabetes classified according to their characteristics, symptoms, causes, and mode of infection of the cells. Type 1 diabetes prevents the production of insulin by the pancreas through the destruction of beta cells. On the other hand, type 2 diabetes is associated with poor diet, obesity, and sedentary lifestyle.

Type 1 and 2 diabetes are related to genetic predisposition, which leads to resistance against insulin production. The resistance genes occur frequently in the genetic composition of patients with schizophrenia (Hemingway et al., 2013). The genes lead to the production of abnormal glucose metabolism due to metabolic syndrome development. Improved diet and exercise reduce the risk of exposure to type 2 diabetes and obesity as they increase insulin sensitivity, improve lipid scores, as well as decrease hypertension and obesity. Detection and screening of diabetes, obesity, and chronic health conditions should be improved through the incorporation of improvised technology (Hemingway et al., 2013). Efficient programs such as the use of HbA1c must be implemented in the mental health centres for the screening of patients to prevent worsening of their conditions.

The provision of guidance and advice to the general healthy population and the SMI patients assist in the maintenance of the body’s functionality. The nurses should possess the professional skills to create physical health awareness to the public (Hemingway et al., 2013). Therefore, mental health nurses should acquire skills in the screening procedures and long-term conditions management to ensure reduced diabetes-related complications.

Final Essay

Introduction

Mental health is the level of psychological wellbeing of an individual functioning at a recommended level of behavioural and emotional adjustment. The World Health Organization terms mental health as perceived self-efficacy, inter-generational dependence, self-actualisation, competence and subjective well-being of an individual in the perspective of holism and positive psychology. Challenges in mental health are linked to family history, life experiences, and biological factors such as genetics. On that note, the population requires the provision of advanced care from the medical practitioners. Nurses usually play a crucial role in enhancing and improving the health status of the patients. As such, nurses mental wellbeing and knowledge on how to deal with patients, their families, and the conditions they are subjected to help in the provision of advanced and quality care. This essay will address the ways of improving knowledge of mental health nurses to enhance the provision of improved healthcare to the mental patients. Throughout the essay, I have selected articles that show the importance of increasing the knowledge of mental health nurses. Evidently, the essay will also discuss the benefits of mental health nurses. I have selected fifteen articles, whereby each article will elaborate on ways to enhance the knowledge base of mental health among nurses.

Mental Health of the Nurses

The first article is “Diabetes: increasing the knowledge base metal of mental health nurses” by Hemingway et al. (2013). In this article, Hemingway et al. (2013) discusses the physical health of people with SMI, which is a section that has been neglected for a prolonged time. As such, the neglects call for the need to develop skills of mental health nurses and associated practitioners. Therefore, the nurses need to have the ability to screen physiological health condition, which is a key area for consideration by the mental health nurses. Patients with SMI have increased progressively due to exposure to conditions that may lead to the development of physical health challenges (Hemingway et al., 2013). The patients are estimated to die approximately 10 years earlier compared to others in the society, especially in the developed worlds. The patients have an increased chance of developing respiratory and coronary heart diseases compared to others in the community (Hemingway et al., 2013). It is clear that employing educational interventions in nursing enhances the mental health nurses’ (MHNs) base knowledge on how to deal with the patients especially those with life-threatening and opportunistic illnesses such as diabetes.

Nurse Leadership and Mental Wellbeing of the Nurses

According to Joseph and Huber (2015), the adoption of a framework for the development of leadership and solution for innovation serve as the core concept and opportunity for improving MHN’s knowledge base. Joseph and Huber (2015) show that skills are also extended to care coordination and interdependency among the nurses. Clinical leadership is important in the nursing world to offer solutions to the complex, chaotic, serious quality and safety issues, as well as high rates of change. In addition, the leadership faces challenges in structuring the skills, knowledge and ability required for improved patients’ care. On that note, the leadership should improve the role of registered nurses (RN) from the traditional care of patients with mental problems to integrated care. According to Joseph and Huber (2015), Obama care reconfigured health care delivery, opened room for expansion of nurses’ roles, and addressed the need for more nurses to aid in improving healthcare for the patients.

The inclusion of care coordination in population pyramid maximises the role of nurses. Care coordination provides insights into the problem and offers possible solutions to optimise the challenges faced by nurses. According to Steaban (2016), care coordination through bundled care efforts has not yet established the techniques that healthcare organisations should use to enhance the quality of the offered care. The author further indicates that the development of objectives of the bundled care is determined by the healthcare institutions, medics, and researchers. For instance, in the United States, the organisations participating in the Medicare Bundle Payment Care Improvement Project are allowed to indicate their interventions in enhancing the quality of care offered to the patients especially those with mental challenges. According to Steaban (2016), the revised models of care in bundle payment are inclusive of the care coordination as stipulated in the Obama care. The models of care address issues such as mitigating financial risk, reducing penalties for readmissions, and meeting gain-sharing benchmarks.

Improving Mental Status of Nurses

Izumi (2013) addresses the measures to consider for improving the quality of the offered care among the nurses. The author further shows how quality improvement has changed to an administrative practice rather than an ethical practice. This creates the need for developing and maintaining professional ethics among the nurses through proper leadership and education. According to Izumi (2013), nurses should maintain the safety of the patients and offer care that is in line with their ethical responsibilities. In fact, MHN should offer care that is beyond the standards recommended to enhance quick recovery of the patient. Izumi (2013) shows that nursing care requires advanced quality indicators to overcome the risks associated with ensuring that nurses provided advanced care to the patients. Evidently, nurses are committed to improving the quality of care, which is jeopardized by the current inappropriate healthcare systems. According to Izumi (2013), nurses have raised grievances towards the government and the Ministry of Health, which are entitled to enhancing the working conditions of the medics.

Healthcare promotion plays a crucial role in improving the relationship between nurses and patients (Tofthagen et al., 2014). The World Health Organization describes health promotion as the process of enhancing and controlling people’s health and defining the mechanisms to improve it. Patel et al. (2011) believe that health promotion is maintained by the established public policy that offers the determinants of the health status of the populations. The determinants of the health status include employment opportunities, poverty level, income, food security, the working conditions, and housing. According to Tofthagen et al. (2014), health promotion can be achieved through social marketing and health education. These factors are usually aligned with a measure to overcome and change factors that may read to health risks due to habitual behaviours. However, the nurses require more time and resources to provide high-quality services and build an outstanding therapeutic relationship with the patients (Sharma, 2006).McHale (2010) shows that a nurse with a positive attitude improves the healthcare offered to patients, especially those with mental disorders. The attitude of healthcare providers may lead to self-harm, which is usually carried out without suicidal thoughts. Evidently, self-harm is aligned with behaviour and attitude towards medication. According to McHale (2010), there are more than 100,000 cases and scenarios of self-harm in the United Kingdom’s hospitals. Most of the cases are associated with the negative experiences that patients have towards the healthcare professionals assigned to them. McHale (2010) shows that negative attitudes among the nurses lead to harming behaviour among the patients. The harming behaviours are also associated with increased illiteracy levels, clinical challenges, and lack of interpersonal confidence.

Number of Nurses offering Care to Patients

According to Monahan (2015), the number of nurses is growing fast, which was estimated to be 19.3 million in 2015. As such, the nursing career comprises the most number of professionals globally. However, there is a deficit of more than one million personnel in the career to offer care to the demanding healthcare industry. Monahan (2015) has shown that a shortage of nurses is predicted to increase globally up to 2030. In fact, more than 250,000 positions in the nursing field will remain unfilled up to 2025. The author further indicates that the increased attrition rate, which is at 61% currently, shows the projected nursing shortage. Monahan (2015) opines that shortage in the nursing career is linked up with increased demand and supply issues, ageing population, and projected changes to the healthcare among others.

Sephel (2011) shows that the number of nurses with inadequate skills is increasing progressively. This leads to the need for improving the quality of care offered by the nurses through proper training and encouraging passion for the career. According to Sephel (2011), the current era has enhanced and overcome the experienced shortage of nurses to offer care to the demand healthcare industry. The author further indicates that the government has established new educational careers leading to offering care to patients. The publicity of the degree programs has succeeded due to the increased number of student in medical related careers. According to Sephel (2011), current nursing programs avail more than 50,000 RN graduates to fill the vacant positions in the medical field. This scenario is essential in overcoming the previously projected statistics of increased nurse deficit by 2030.

The Relationship between Nurses and Patients

Ciccone et al. (2010) consider encouragement of patients as a major way to improve the relationship between the patient and the practitioners. Patients should be advised to take an active role in their health care management. They are encouraged to communicate regularly with the health care nurses on their conditions. Similarly, the health care team should implement a strong partnership with the patients, which should involve the patient empowerment models. These models consider patients as the most crucial member of the health team and the care managers and nurses as the collaborators in the matters relating to health (Ciccone et al., 2010). As a result, the majority of the patients’ records in the contemporary world will depict a positive outcome characterised by reduced mortality rates. The duration taken in the hospital wards will also be reduced significantly as the patients will be diagnosed over a small period.

According to Martensson et al. (2014), the nurses develop positive altitude if their knowledge toward the mental illness patient is handled with less stigmatisation, and could be created and transmitted at the workplace. It should be noted that nurses are in frequent contact with the patients, thus, they play a crucial role in influencing a positive patient outcome. The nurses provide the necessary courage as well as health care to the mental health illnesses patients. During the ailing period, patients need to be monitored closely to avoid unnecessary pains as well as deaths (Martensson et al., 2014). The mental health staff should provide a positive environment for the patients and the workplaces. Martensson et al (2014) argue that a negative mental attitude is transferred to the other workplaces through the subcultures as well as promotional and transfer from one institute to the other.

Challenges affecting Mental Health of Nurses

According to Tamlander et al. (2016), young nurses should be prevented from stigmatisation, which enables the creation of a better future workforce. Moreover, a negative attitude affects people mentally in the world and has become a major health issue. As a result, primary health care settings in many health institutes have implemented the departments of positive patients’ relationships to ensure that negativity is reduced in the health sector (Tamlander et al., 2016). However, younger nurses express a sense of fear to the mentally ill patients and that such patients should be separated from the others. The young nurses argue that such patients have no sense and they can perform strange thins unknowingly. Therefore, health training institutions should incorporate continuous and systematic in their curriculum. In addition, the young nurses should be encouraged to avoid the negative attitude towards the mentally ill patients.

According to Papathanasiou et al. (2014), nurses should have adequate critical thinking ability that involves evaluations in critical analysis to enhance their understanding of how to handle the patients. As such, the distinction between facts and opinions creates the essence of developing critical thinking in nursing schools. Critical thinking is an essential part in the nursing career that the nurses employed in offering care and improving the health status of the patients. Papathanasiou et al. (2014) further indicate that critical thinking is a mental process that entails analysing, evaluating, and synthesizing information affecting the patients. The information can be collected through reflection, experience, communication, reasoning, and observation, which leads to making decisions and action plans. Papathanasiou et al. (2014) believe that the plans are aimed at enhancing the quality of healthcare that patients receive from the healthcare providers.

Knowledge Level of Nurses

Lechasseur et al. (2011) argue that a high level of knowledge can be gained through critical thinking to give rise to constructive knowledge, which is more important than aesthetic knowledge. The constructive knowledge fits best in the nursing field to favour the provision of high-quality services to the mentally challenged patients. The author further indicates that the patients require holistic care, which is based on knowledge developed through critical thinking. As such, holistic care leads to difficulties among novice nurses since they have little experience in offering care to patients through critical thinking. In addition, nurses should offer care as per the approaches outlined in the grounded theory, which also calls for offering care through evidence-based practice (Lechasseur et al., 2011). The healthcare should be in line with the three pillars of the evidence-based care, which include research, clinical expertise, and patient values.

Conclusion

The World Health Organization defines medical health of nurses as the perceived self-efficacy, self-actualization, and subjective well-being of the nurses, which is in line with holism. Nurses usually play a crucial role in enhancing and improving the health status of the patients. On that note, the mental status of the nurses is crucial on how to deal with patients, their families, and the conditions they are subjected to help in the provision of advanced and quality care. Improving knowledge base of nurses is crucial in enhancing the provision of improved healthcare to the patients. The healthcare that nurses provide is determined by the health status and knowledge base of the patients.

Reference List