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Nursing Interview Hot Topic: Mental Health Nursing
If you have decided on a career in nursing, be it mental health, adult or children nursing, it is important to understand the scope and limitations of your role. With so many different career paths and opportunities, it can be difficult to cover a nurse’s role fully.
Instead, let’s focus on mental health nursing and the role of a mental health nurse. Often overlooked, but an incredibly important role within health and social care. Mental health nursing can offer you a highly challenging and incredibly rewarding career.
What is a Mental Health Nurse?
A mental health nurse may work in many of the same settings as an adult nurse. These settings include residential homes, hospitals and community services. However, mental health nurses are also found in specialist mental health units and secure facilities. Mental health nurses are integral to the interdisciplinary healthcare team and must work alongside various health and social care professionals.
The role of a mental health nurse is to observe, monitor and improve their patients’ mental health. Much of this is done through building a rapport with patients and forming a positive therapeutic relationship. While being personable and working with patients is always important in all areas of nursing, it is a major part of the diagnostic and treatment process of mental health nursing. Many diagnostic and therapeutic scales and questionnaires used in mental health nursing rely heavily on working with patients to create a therapeutic relationship. Where adult nurses often rely upon physical signs and symptoms, which can be empirically measured, mental health nurses must rely on more subtle social and psychological cues. Mental health nurses must learn to rely on their instincts and the relationships they can build with those in their care.
How is Mental Health Nursing Different?
Mental health nursing relies on building effective relationships with those who access mental health services and their family and carers. These relationships must be individual and person based as the support a mental health nurse provides can vary widely from patient to patient. Mental health nurses might help one person to take their medication correctly while advising another about appropriate therapies or social activities. Mental health nurses may be required to consider whether a patient has the mental capacity to make an informed choice, if they could be a danger to themselves and others, or even whether they should be detained under the Mental Health Act. Mental health nurses must make decisions like whether to try to talk someone through their difficulties, whether to try and calm them down, or whether to use legal restraints on them. Mental health nursing has a high level of professional responsibility, including the legal power to detain a patient on a ward for up to six hours.
The role of a Mental Health Nurse
As a mental health nurse, you would need to be able to establish and build trusting relationships with others. This must often be done quickly and often with little or no prior interaction. Mental health nurses must be able to understand an individual’s situation and assess what must be implemented to achieve a positive outcome.
To become a mental health nurse, you must complete a degree-level university qualification. Entry requirements will vary on which university you wish to complete your degree. A mental health nursing degree will include training regarding the legal context of the role and the skills needed to identify whether someone may be at risk of harming themselves or someone else.
Mental health nurses and adult nurses share certain roles. Both roles have to demonstrate an understanding of physical health and physiology. Mental and physical health are heavily linked in several ways. Poor mental health can heavily impact physical health and healthy lifestyle decisions; many with mental health difficulties may develop acute and chronic physical conditions. Equally, chronic conditions can be impacted by worsening mental health, or chronic illness can lead to worsening mental health. Many physical limitations or medications associated with health conditions can create mental health difficulties.
Mental health nurses often work with and care for patients for far longer than adult nurses. Mental health nurses often use long-term and complex therapeutic techniques. Progress is often made over extended periods and can carry over several months. This process may take place entirely within a residential or hospital setting. Or patients may have periods both in and out of the hospital while they live with and manage their condition for years. Mental health nurses will become used to seeing these patients and can build lasting and positive relationships with these people.
A mental health nurse must advocate and care for those that have complex problems. These individuals have often been stigmatised by society and may be very difficult to treat. Mental health nurses must also understand the complex relationship between social deprivation, social isolation, and mental health.
What you May be Asked in a Nursing Interview
- What is the role of a mental health nurse?
- Why are you interested in becoming a mental health nurse?
- What are some of the difficulties of being a mental health nurse?
- Who may a mental health nurse work and collaborate with?
- Do mental health nurses still need a good knowledge of physiology?
- What does the term “mental capacity” mean?
- How does the Mental Capacity Act 2005 relate to mental health nursing?
- What does it mean to ‘section’ a patient?
How to Prepare for your Nursing Interview
Before interviewing for a mental health nursing degree, be aware of the role and responsibilities included in the job. This will include the unique challenges that may come with the role of mental health nurse. Know which professional bodies and guidance are relevant to mental health nursing and the importance of mental health nursing in health and social care.
Those interviewing for a nursing degree should understand the roles and responsibilities of other nursing specialities, including child nursing, adult nursing and learning disability nursing. As well as the unique responsibilities and powers that come with their chosen speciality. Read more in our article on Top Tips for a Nursing Interview.
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