Standardized Patients Portraying Mental Illness: Understanding The Benefits Of Lived Experience In Nursing Practice

Competency of Nurses In Mental Care

Discuss about the Standardized Patients Portraying Mental Illness.

Mental illness is a health condition in which a person’s thinking pattern and feeling is affected leading to impaired daily life functions. Mental health disorder may not be the results of one event; it may be caused by multiple factors. A person newly diagnosed with mental illness fail to understand the symptoms and manage his condition. However, a person with lived experience of mental illness can understand the effects of mental illness, recovery and the therapeutic intervention to manage daily life activities. According to nursing and midwifery Board, a nurse must deliver care to address complex physical and mental health needs of patients (Halcomb et al. 2016). However, nurses have often been found to be incompetent in mental care and many struggles to provide care to mentally ill patients despite their best efforts. This occurs mainly due to lack of resource and complexities involved in treating people with mental illness (Townsend 2014). Due to this problem, there is increased focus on interaction with patients who have lived experience of mental illness to develop and improve nursing practice. Health care consumers with lived experience of mental illness are becoming a new solution to nursing dilemma. Patients with lived experience help to provide new insight to enhance and maximize care and overcome challenges in mental health treatment. Their self-help skills and interaction with peer support groups gives them the necessary knowledge to understand the complexities involved in mental illness and manage them. A nurse entering mental health care may benefit a lot form interaction with such patients to professionally develop in their job (Light et al. 2014).

The purpose of the essay is to understand the benefits of health care consumer with lived experience of mental illness to overcome dilemmas in nursing practice and learn from the experience of patients to enhance and develop nursing competency in treating patients with mental illness. The essay discusses the contribution of patient’s expert by experience and how they develop nursing practice with support from evidence-based literature. The relevance of the findings from literature related to carer’s and consumer’s experience of living with mental illness is examined in relation to own nursing practice. Taking the patient’s perspective in mental illness can be an effective step to modify nursing intervention to achieve better patient outcome in psychiatric care.

Nurses are incompetent in caring for mentally ill patients because they do not get the practical exposure during their nursing graduation program. During the pre-licensure level, nurses are trained to understand vital signs, deliver treatment, assess patient status, and administer medication. Through technical and mechanical skills, nursing students conceptualize nursing practice. Due to little exposure to mental ill patients in pre-licensure stage, nurses face difficulty in the transition to post-licensure stage when they face difficulty in communicating with mentally ill patients and understanding their illness (Sabella & Fay-Hillier 2014). Considering the presence of this challenge in mental health nursing, a phenomenographic study was useful in providing insight into the experiences of person living with severe mental illness. Weimand et al. (2013) showed that patients and families with mental illness experience many challenges and complex life situation due to mental disorder. The phenomenographic analysis of patients with live experience showed that they either learn to balance multiple health concerns or struggle between opposing feelings and thought patterns. Relative of mentally ill patients mostly revealed that ethical dilemma mostly arise, and lot of love and compassion and sense of duty is needed to take care of mentally ill person. The support from family members followed by adequate follow-up is the key to achieve better outcome for patients with mental illness.

Lived Experience from Patient’s Perspective

Examination of lived experience of consumers is important for nurses as their experience match up with other mentally ill patients in hospitals. Hiring such patients with lived experience may help a nurse to understand the cause of mental disorder and the associated symptom for particular patient. They serve as a recovery role model as they reflect other patient’s needs through their lived experience with the ailment (Yang et al. 2014). Another research gives insight into the nursing students lived experience with mental illness and how this had impact on their practice. Their personal experience of mental distress either by themselves or through families was analyzed. Interaction with them revealed that certain experience in life such as domestic violence, death of loved ones, relationship and other social issues drive them to extreme depression and eventually mental disorder. Such carers with lived experience can enhance mental health nursing practice because through their personal experience, they develop understanding of others experience and how they feel. This can be useful for nurse to assist patients in developing coping strategies to manage mental illness. Under such circumstances, nurses can easily empathize with patients suffering, understand their mental conflicts and provide necessary nursing intervention (Gilbert & Stickley 2012). Lived experience of carers automatically leads to emanation of empathy and developing therapeutic relationship with patients. Hence, through lived experience of mental illness, carers can easily relate to patient issues and think on humanistic level to display sympathy and engage in shared decision making.

The interaction with heath care consumer who has lived with experiences of mental illness also helps in understanding of structural vulnerability that exposes them to experiences of stigma. As discrimination often leads to non-adherence to treatment and increased health care spending, gaining knowledge from this group can help to address the barrier involved in effective and appropriate care. Based on this knowledge, nurse can take action to shift user’s position from area of vulnerability to safer health care outcome (Yang et al. 2014). Apart from the role of experienced health care consumer in developing mental health nursing practice, the performance of nurse is also dependent on their professional skills, personal values and environmental factors in health care setting. Nurse self-awareness and support about the needs of mentally ill patient is most critical in building relationship with patients and providing care according to current needs of patients. It will increase patient’s satisfaction with the service, reduce symptoms of mental distress and develop an environment to facilitate early recovery of patients (Gunasekara et al. 2014).

Benefits of Health Care Consumer with Lived Experience

Another research into experiences of mental health consumers gave the idea that nurses can know about the use and effect of anti-psychotic medications from them. The experience of people undergoing mental care treatment revealed the impact of anti-psychotic medication, attitude towards the use of medication in patients and the coping strategies adopted by them to manage the side-effects. Some participants in the study also revealed that severe side-effects had an adverse impact on their daily life functions. There was a common trend to change the dosage of medication which was also harmful. The presence of side-effects in anti-psychotic medication often lead to non-adherence to treatment and this is often the reason for relapse of symptoms despite continued treatment. Side-effects were regarded by patients as an additional burden for the health care system. Hence, this form of interaction can inform mental health nurses about the common side-effects associated with ant-psychotic medications such as dry mouth, locked jaw, nausea, dizziness, vomiting, skin sensitivity, disorientation and many others. It will help them understand the cumulative effect of medication on patients and identify factors that might lead patients to deny medications (Morrison et al. 2015). Based on this understanding, they can take plan strategies to improve adherence and acceptance to treatment regimen. This interaction with lived experience can make nurses aware of erroneous coping strategies adopted by patients to manage side-effects and correcting them by means of relaxation and personal support techniques. Nurse can turn as an advocate for patients through correct information sharing and collaborating with patients to make informed and shared decision making in mental care (Brown & Gray  2015).

The mental health consumers, expert with experience gives an idea about the health care access issues, feeling of isolation due to stigma, resistance to treatment and any vulnerability and distress in patients with mental illness. Through this knowledge, newly placed nurse can get the necessary exposure to engage in decision making and decide on appropriate nursing intervention for patients. They can develop their competency in mental health nursing to address issues of patients and make a different in the quality of life of patients (Stuart 2014). Hence, expert patients having all knowledge of management of mental illness can help to develop the skills of incompetent nurse to provide a supportive environment for mentally ill patients. A study investigating the impact of patients with lived experience showed that nurse performance improved a lot and they built on confidence to tackle the issues of patients. A systematic method of arrangement to train nurses followed by debriefing with patients with lived experience of mental illness can help to achieve mental well-being of patients (Jarosinski & Webster 2016).

Knowing About Anti-Psychotic Medications

As I am going to be a newly registered nurse soon, the above finding from different evidence regarding the role of patients expert with experience can help me a lot to develop my skills in nursing profession. The first and foremost priority for me will be to engage in professional practice by complying with current legislation in nursing practice, engaging in self-appraisal, critical reflection, developing skills of coordinated care and sustaining therapeutic relation with patients (Melnyk et al. 2014). Through the findings on experience of carers involved in patients living with mental illness, I got an idea about the feelings and issues of patients in care. I will use this information to modify my nursing values in mental care and display empathy and support for such patients to give them relief from their illness. The interaction with such carer will help me to understand factors that lead to non-adherence to treatment and then plan strategies to overcome them. Patient centered care is most important in mental illness and the above findings will help me to develop effective relation with patients (Ignatavicius & Workman 2015). The findings gave rise to key themes and issues faced by mentally ill patients such as lack of knowledge regarding health care access, low awareness and self-help skills, problems associated with side-effects of anti-psychotic medication, factors leading to non-adherence to treatment and many others. With the knowledge of these issues before my clinical placement, I can prepare myself accordingly. Patients with live experience will also provide me support to develop health assessment skills and continue my focus on treatment. The findings from the study will be useful to promote optimal health and well-being and prevention of mental illness. The training with expert patients and carers will provided opportunities to update skills and knowledge in mental health nursing. This will enable me to overcome theory-practice gap and achieve the recovery of patients (Yong-Shian et al. 2016).

From the essay on lived experience of mental illness and developing nursing practice, it can be said that interaction with this health care consumer is fast becoming a solution to overcome nursing dilemmas. The findings from different study revealed that cares with lived experience can better understand the feelings and emotions of other patients due to their own personal experience. Through this experience, they will develop the values of empathy to support patients with mental conflicts. Beside the examination of patients with lived experience gave an idea about the barrier in treatment such as stigma, side-effects of medication, grief and trauma in life, poor self-help skills and management of illness in daily life. Through these findings, personal nursing practice can be improved by getting aware of the problem before becoming a registered nurse. This will help to practice according to professional standards of nursing practice.

Reference

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