Mental Health Nursing

carving a path to practice

Paul Illingworth, Laura Singleton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317903161
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Are you wondering if a career in Mental Health Nursing is right for you? If you are considering studying Mental Health Nursing or have already begun your course this book is the perfect tool to see if you have what it takes to be a Mental Health Nurse.

It will tell you what to expect in your studies and address the ups and the downs of becoming a Mental Health nurse. It contains personal anecdotes from students who have already completed their course and advice from Mental Health lecturers on how to get the most out of your studies. This book will guide you through your course from beginning to end and prepare you for your future career.

Chapter 1

Routes to becoming a mental health nurse

Laura Singleton, Jane Anderson and Anna Cardow

Introduction

There are a variety of routes that you can take into mental health nursing courses. For example, some people start the course straight after leaving school and others go in as mature students having worked in mental health prior to starting nursing. Other students will have been previously working in an unrelated area and change career completely after first having worked or done a degree in a different field. All of these students bring with them diverse experiences that help them in their mental health nursing career. In this chapter we will discuss these various routes and also the different courses that lead to mental health nurse registration and will talk from our perspective about the routes that we took into a mental health nursing course.

In this chapter the differences between universities, not only in the courses that they offer for mental health nursing students but also in the structure of the universities themselves, for example campus versus non-campus, will be discussed along with how to begin to choose from among the many universities that offer a mental health nursing course. We will also explain the different options that can support you in gaining a place on a mental health nursing course and how to increase your chances at application and interview stage of gaining a place on the course.

Chapter outcomes

After reading this chapter you should:

• Understand what it means to be a mental health nurse

• Understand the routes into mental health nursing

• Know the differences between a mental health nursing diploma, advanced diploma, graduate diploma, degree and master’s courses

• Know more about how to choose where you want to study

• Understand the options available to support you in becoming a mental health nurse, e.g. cadet courses, access courses, secondments

• Know about the different intake dates and studying options for mental health nursing courses

• Understand how to apply to become a mental health nurse and what the selection process can involve

What is a mental health nurse?

It is important to know about and to understand the role of a mental health nurse to decide whether this is a profession in which you want to work. There are a number of professions that work within mental health services, and to a certain point many of these roles overlap. Indeed, job advertisements for ‘mental health workers’ often state that applicants from a range of professional backgrounds can apply. While there are overlaps in the roles of different mental health professionals, there are also significant differences in the courses and jobs. For example, social workers will have undertaken general social work courses that encompass a range of different aspects of social work and on qualification can work in any area of social work (but need to undergo further training to work as approved mental health practitioners, as do other mental health professionals). They will have more knowledge and skills in working with people needing social benefits or social circumstances assessments than mental health nurses, psychologists or occupational therapists and they will have more of an understanding of the process of child protection procedures (although all staff should have some training in this). Mental health nurses, on the other hand, will have more teaching during their course on working with people with a range of mental health problems, from acute crises to enduring mental health, and cover a wider range of therapeutic approaches relevant to mental health work in nursing courses. Mental health nurses also learn about medication and the administration and monitoring of this, which social workers, psychologists and occupational therapists do not learn. An overview of the different professional roles is given in Chapter 8 ‘How to maximise placements’ to provide you with more information about other mental health professions and how these fit in within mental health care as a whole.

Mental health nursing students currently choose to specialise in that branch prior to commencing a nursing course, although some students who enter adult, child and learning disability branches change to the mental health branch as they realise their interest in mental health during the common foundation year. Mental health nursing courses have an initial Common Foundation Programme which all nursing students take, and while this usually focuses on general nursing, it also introduces the mental health, child and learning disability nursing branches, so students gain some knowledge and experience of the different fields.

For the last two years of their nursing course, mental health nurses have placements and study modules relevant to mental health nursing and so gain a lot of specific knowledge and skills, although this may also include topics such as physical health for people with mental health problems as highlighted in the Chief Nursing Officer’s review of mental health nursing (Department of Health, 2006). Once qualified, mental health nurses can work in a range of settings with a variety of service users, within the NHS, in the independent sector and also for charities, and can specialise in different areas of mental health (as will be further discussed in Chapter 11 ‘Transition to qualified mental health nurse’. On a day-to-day basis, the role of a mental health nurse varies greatly depending on the area in which he or she works, but may include helping or prompting service users with daily living skills (for example getting dressed, preparing food); formally and informally assessing the mental state of service users; giving medication; co-facilitating therapeutic groups; individual key worker sessions; writing care plans with service users on specific treatment goals; admitting and discharging service users; liaising with other teams; writing reports and notes; managing crises; supervising junior staff; attending team meetings; supporting families; and numerous other tasks that present throughout the day. You may see from this that the role of the mental health nurse cannot easily be summed up in one sentence, but overall the role is to work with people experiencing mental health problems, and their families, to help them move towards recovery (whatever that means to the individual). The diversity of the role makes it an interesting and challenging career with no two days the same.

Students’ experiences prior to mental health nursing courses

Students come into mental health nursing courses with a range of experience and qualifications. Some students start a mental health nursing course at 17 or 18 years, straight from school, and may have little previous experience in mental health. Many, however, are mature students who have different life experience. Studies have found that mental health nursing generally attracts more mature students, with many students having previously worked or studied for a number of years prior to deciding on a career as a mental health nurse (Robinson et al., 2001). On many mental health nursing courses there are also a significant number of parents returning to study after taking some time out of work to have children. In our cohort (year group), in the mental health branch, everyone was a mature student having worked (often in mental health) or studied before starting the course, which meant that we all had a range of transferable experiences from our previous roles. Some students starting mental health nursing courses will have experience as support workers or health care assistants in mental health settings and this should allow them to have a good knowledge of working with service users with a range of mental health problems, although they have to be mindful on placements that they are in a mental health student nurse role rather than that of a support worker. This can be difficult for some to remember initially. If support workers who want to go on to start a mental health nursing course have not got the necessary formal entry requirements (for example academic qualifications), then they can go on access courses or do cadet courses to help towards the entry requirements to mental health nursing. That said, undertaking an access course does not mean automatic entry to a mental health nursing course; the usual application procedure is always required.

Access courses

Access courses are usually run part time over one or two years at further education colleges. These courses usually do not have any formal entry requirements, but students are often interviewed prior to entry to see if they have the necessary skills and commitment and may also be required to have at least one year’s experience of working prior to entry. There are various access courses based on what the students are interested in and future career education choices. Health access courses are generic courses for students who want to study any branch of nursing (and sometimes other health professions), so are not mental health focused at this stage. The course includes sessions on numeracy and literacy, information technology (IT) skills and also on health-related topics such as nursing, psychology, sociology and sciences. This is a good preparation for students prior to commencing a nursing course and can help ease them back into studying if they have not studied for a long period. On successful completion of this course students are eligible to apply for entry to nursing diploma courses in any of the branches.

Cadet courses

Some NHS Trusts offer a nursing cadet scheme whereby people who do not have the formal entry requirements for nursing courses can apply to be a nursing cadet as a way of gaining the necessary skills and qualifications to enter a nursing diploma course. This is usually a one- or two-year course and cadets work part time on a range of wards (usually general) and also attend college part time, undertaking a BTEC National Certificate in Health Studies. Cadets are paid while on this scheme and also have their college fees paid by the NHS Trust. On successful completion they are eligible for entry to a nursing diploma course.

You can find out if your local NHS Trust offers a cadet scheme by approaching them about it, although this option appears to be more common in general nursing than in mental health.

Secondments to mental health nursing courses

In some NHS Trusts secondment opportunities are offered to support workers who have worked within that trust for a certain length of time. This means that these people are still employed and paid as a support worker throughout the duration of their mental health nursing course and are (in theory) offered a post on successful completion of the course. Some Trusts specify that on qualification the mental health nurse has to work within the Trust for an additional length of time, but others do not make this specification. The main benefit of this scheme is that students are paid as a support worker throughout the course rather than receiving a bursary, as is the norm for most other students undertaking nursing degrees or diplomas.

Other mental health nursing students may have decided on a career change from an unrelated profession so may have little, or no, experience of mental health, as was the case for Anna (see below). It can be difficult initially for students who have not studied for many years to get back into that process again, but universities often recognise that many mature students start nursing courses and offer support in assignment writing and with study techniques to help them manage this experience. Some students will have already completed a degree in a different subject and so be used to studying but may still find the intensity of the mental health nursing course with placements and university quite different from their previous course which may have consisted of 8–12 hours of lectures a week for 24–30 weeks a year – somewhat different from a nursing course!

Our routes into mental health nursing

All of our cohort had very different experiences before starting our mental health nursing courses but were able to share relevant previous experiences with the group to highlight different viewpoints. We are going to tell you a bit about our different backgrounds to highlight the range of routes by which people enter mental health nursing.

Laura

I had completed a degree in psychology after leaving school and, on finishing that degree, knew that I wanted to work within mental health, but thought that clinical psychology was the career that most interested me. In line with this I had volunteered in a head injury day centre and in an adult acute mental health unit during my degree and did work experience with a cognitive behaviour therapist at an independent hospital, all of which I found interesting.

After my degree I got a job in an adolescent mental health unit as a support worker which gave me experience of working with different members of the multi-disciplinary team, mainly mental health nurses but also psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, social workers and other therapists. This made me realise that I enjoyed the role of the mental health nurse and liked working in therapeutic groups, but also liked working on shift with the young people, which led me to consider mental health nursing as a career option.

After working as a support worker for a year I was seconded for six months to work as a research assistant within adolescent mental health and then returned to working as a support worker. I then applied for a secondment for mental health nursing and also for a mental health nursing course and was accepted for both. I therefore had experience of studying prior to the mental health nursing course. However, my psychology degree was only 8 hours of lectures a week and the rest was ‘self-directed learning’, so starting a busy nursing course incorporating lectures and placements, up to 40 hours a week, was quite different from the student experience that I had previously had. While doing a psychology degree I had also had long holidays (22 weeks a year) which was very different from the longer terms and shorter holidays in the nursing course. So overall I found being a student mental health nurse a very different student experience from most other courses, but it was also a lot of fun. Going back to university was also different as I was not living in halls of residence or with other students, as I had done during my psychology degree, so was not as involved in the ‘student life’ in the same way as I previously was as a younger student leaving home for the first time. This probably meant that I worked harder the second time round.

I had two quite different times at university but really enjoyed both of them and am glad that I did both rather than doing mental health nursing at 18 or 19 years as I don’t think I would have been ready at that age to do this course, but this varies for each individual.

Anna

I did not come from a field in nursing or working with people with mental health problems. In fact I worked as a senior sales consultant in in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Routes to becoming a mental health nurse
• Chapter 2: Passage through the Common Foundation Programme
• Chapter 3: Journey through the mental health branch
• Chapter 4: Inter-professional education, learning and working
• Chapter 5: How to survive the academic side of university
• Chapter 6: Maintaining a healthy life balance at university and living within your means
• Chapter 7: Getting the most out of your lecturers
• Chapter 8: How to maximise placements
• Chapter 9: Getting the full advantage of elective and preference placements
• Chapter 10: Questions you want to ask but haven’t
• Chapter 11: Transition to qualified mental health nurse
• Appendix: Useful websites
• Glossary
• Index