Mental health nurse (RMN) jobs can be a great opportunity for many nurses. It’s not always thought of as a possible career direction when you are getting your nursing degree; as often the emphasis of these courses are around physical health. However, a lot of the skillsets learnt within your degree are tailored toward both physical and mental health. Additionally, there are so many ways to expand your knowledge being a healthcare professional and possibly change your field of work within your career. By looking into courses such as CME courses for physicians, and many other courses available, you can broaden your horizons in the healthcare profession. In this article, I will have a look at a few general skills that have a particularly important purpose within mental health nursing.
Firstly, just as much as physical health nursing, communication is key within this field. Your communication skills may have to be different when treating mental health patients though. Treating each patient differently, and understanding the best way to communicate with them, while observing whether they are fully understanding what you are asking/telling them. Just like other areas of healthcare, nurses are often the healthcare professional a patient will have the most interaction with. Thus, these communication skills need to be used in a way to build good, trusting relationships with patients. This will have a knock on effect to trust between the patient and other members of the healthcare team. In mental health, building this sort of trust can often be quite an arduous task, but is often more vital to the success of treatment than in physical healthcare.
Having an empathetic nature will help any nurse through their daily tasks. Empathy within mental health might not come as naturally, as problems aren’t as visible just on the surface. Therefore, a particularly strong empathetic nature is needed within mental health nursing. This strong empathetic nature can be achieved in various ways; one of them is by practicing Yoga. There are several sections in the brain that is responsible for regulating both stress and empathy. Stress generally makes it tough for humans to think properly and respond quickly. Moreover, extreme stress shuts down the higher sections of the brain and alters our biology, which in turn can give rise to physical illness. The more stress that an individual suffers from, the less empathy they are capable of. That is where yoga comes in handy. Through the practice of yoga, individuals can develop the ability to be more empathetic and connected to others around them. Moreover, Yoga is the perfect means to release emotional anxiety in the body and to experience the healing that comes with this release. By practicing yoga one can discover deeply stored emotions, bring them to the surface, and let them completely release from the body. It is important to remember that there is a direct correlation between stress and the ability to be empathetic, and this issue can only be solved by spiritual healing programs like Yoga. The best part is nurses who have learned yoga can also teach others (like mental health patients) the way to achieve relaxation and stress relief. For that, however, nurses might have to first take up yoga teaching courses (consider searching for 200 hour ytt to learn more about such courses) from training institutes like Siddhi Yoga.
Closely tied with this is constantly being non-judgemental, some decisions of patients with mental health issues can be hard to comprehend. To show a level of judgment though can be damaging to the treatment process, have a negative long-term effect on the patient, and is simply unprofessional. If you are able to achieve this, then it is possible to start to have a unconditional positive regard for patients. You may be one of the few, if only people in their life that is able to treat them like a fellow human being, an equal, a friend. Of course, this is important within physical health too. The main difference is that by being able to do all these things within mental health, you are creating the necessary conditions needed for treatment to have a chance of success.
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