Mental Health Nursing

Mental Health/Psychiatric Nursing is a specialised area of nursing that focuses on supporting people with mental illness and/or mental distress. The goal of this profession is to help people to live a meaningful life and to promote recovery, independence and self-care.

This specialty of nursing is a wonderful and unique profession with unrivalled rewards gained from positively impacting people’s lives every day.

Mental Health nurses work across all services and play an active part in multidisciplinary teams.

The duties for a Registered Mental Health Nurse (RPN) may include: 

• Assessing the health care needs of the service user.
• Planning care based on the outcomes of the assessments.
• Implementing care.
• Evaluating care outcomes, reassessing, planning and implementing accordingly, taking into account the health needs of the service user.
• Monitoring individual progress and response to care-engaging accordingly with multidisciplinary team.
• Consultations with services users in care delivery settings or in their homes through technology platforms.
• Building therapeutic relationships with individuals by listening to, talking to, and providing reassurance when needed.
• All aspects of medication management.
• Supporting individuals and their families where appropriate and signposting to other agencies who can also provide support when required.
• Planning and evaluating care with the multidisciplinary team and updating nursing care based on the outcomes of these evaluations.
• Maintaining accurate nursing and clinical records and documentation in line with professional guidance and local policies, procedures, protocols and guidelines.
• Supporting services users to engage in psychosocial interventions and therapeutic activities that are beneficial to their care and treatment plan and recovery.
• Nursing assessments including risk assessments and safety plans.
• Liaising with family and supporters where appropriate for the persons care, treatment, discharge planning and recovery.
• Liaising with other healthcare professionals and providers relevant to the service user when necessary for their care.
• Undertaking nurse prescribing training if required for your role.

Skills required:

• Nurses should have a wide range of skills, including exceptional communication that can be adjusted to each individual service user’s needs. Mental health nurses should possess emotional intelligence and the ability to show empathy and understanding.
• The ability to assess potentially escalating situations and implement de-escalation skills in a calm and professional manner.
• Risk assessment and safety planning skills – an awareness of different types and dynamics of risk and the ability to engage in risk assessment and safety planning, the ability to act on, communicate and escalate any safety concerns to the relevant person, clinical professional and within the multidisciplinary team as necessary.
• Mental Health Nurses should have strong organisational and critical thinking skills, which support informed decision-making.
• Mental Health Nurses will have excellent communication skills and have the capacity to engage with service users, their families and supports and collaborate with other members of the multidisciplinary team.
• Mental Health Nurses should possess the ability to respond to emergency situations professionally.

 Further details can be found on the Careers Portal