What is Person-Centered Care?
Person-centered care means putting individuals together with their families at the center of decisions and seeing them as professionals working together with experts to acquire the best results. The term can also be referred to as patient-centered, user-centered or family-centered. Person-centered nursing practice is portrayed as care that respects individuals, values them and organizes care to meet their needs. It has been noted that individuals who have experienced mental illness can add up to the development of person-centred care. Collaborative mental health nursing practice needs the interaction between clients and nurses to maintain a relationship with the clients to ensure the care is client-centered.
1. Person-centered mental health nursing practice entails handling clients as people and not handling them according to their condition to protect their dignity and their rights respected. People with lived experience represent consumers whose experiences emulate the people presently receiving services. To change the way in which providers of a mental health care think about their clients, advancement of competencies in recovery-oriented care has been utilized in mental health systems (Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, 2013). The understanding of the recovery has been boosted by involving individuals with lived experiences of a psychological disorder who provide advice to individuals who might be facing the same problem.
The individuals who have lived with the experience of mental illness are willing to give suggestions depicting from their own experiences such as poverty, depression, and distress along with resilience and recovery experiences. Moreover, they reassure those people with the problem that things will be good and they should persevere and be persistent for better results at the end. Also, they advise them to look for assistance, take care of themselves by accepting the illness and taking precautions to prevent becoming unwell and maintain social involvement (Happell, Cowin, Roper, Lakeman and Cox, 2013). Furthermore, they advise the people to create a relationship with their providers by being honest and open to the practitioners. Since they have the facts about what the patients are experiencing, then they can understand them in an emphatic manner.
The people with lived experience of mental disorder have the responsibility of educating the whole community on the issues concerning mental health and how to help the community to support the people involved in the health problem on a process of recovering rather than the route of a permanent ailment. From their experience, the experts understand what has been done to support them and what needs to be developed. In that case, they can provide a distinctive outlook on the effect of a present or a future policy along with assisting decision makers to comprehend how the change can be executed (Happell, Cowin, Roper, Lakeman and Cox, 2013).
Experts by experience have moved mental health from a medical facility to a recovery facility via contributing to personal recovery (Slade and Longden, 2015). They disprove stigma and prejudice concerning the capability of individuals with a lived experience to live independent and have a fruitful life. Because of their inherent capacity to support and comprehend people affected by the mental disorder they have the aptitude to develop person-centered psychological health nursing practices.
Collaborative Mental Health Nursing Practice
Peers develop concern to patients by beginning to contact with patients calmly and respectfully. In that case, they encourage clients to interact with them freely without pressure (National Mental Health Commission, 2013). This perspective gives the clients to understand that it is all about them and not peers or the staff and they feel appreciated. Furthermore, when the experts by experience listen attentively to their clients, they contribute much to the improvement of patient-centred care since their kindness and how they give feedback vindicates their patients (Department of Health and Ageing, 2009). The physical presence of the experts by experience on the confined sections allows patients to have a lot of freedom and have the accessibility to enjoy the available resources.
These experts work with either the staff or the clients, and their achievement depends on the cooperation of the clients and the team (Hungerford, Hodgson, Clancy, Monisse-Redman, Bostwick and Jones, 2015). Therefore, they consume most of their time supporting and promoting the collaboration by finding colleagues and sharing information. People with lived experience of mental disorder serve as examples to clients and the staff. For clients who are looking for ways to attain their goals, they are granted someone to listen to for their achievements (Slade, 2013). On the other hand, for staff seeking for ways to perform their tasks they are provided with an example of recovery in action by the peers and their expertise serve as examples.
2. Regarding my nursing practice, the aspect that I found with a need to be improved is competence. For a mental health nurse to work cooperatively with people who have a lived experience of mental disorder must know how to fight the fear and stress due to change of environment to deliver well (Australian College of Mental Health Nurses, 2013). A nurse may feel that he or she is being confined in prison. However, lack of competence may be as a result of stress which can be due to the workload, efficiency and confidence in the nursing responsibility or due to collaboration with other professionals. During my nursing practice, the first time I was full of anxiety and I received so many complaints and conflicts concerning the work in the psychiatric ward and the association with the patients.
As a psychiatric nurse one is confronted with various issues to cope with his or her roles. A sense of insufficiency of profession and deprivation of knowledge is demonstrated at work especially when patients have questions, and you do not know what to answer. Moreover, the presence of the inability to cope with the environment due to some limitations of unclear duties and rules and regulations which are not easily understood results to the feeling of being inadequate in the profession and weak (Meadows, Farhall, Fossey, Grigg, McDermott and Singh, 2012).
At first, communicating with patients was a challenge due to a lot of pressure at work lacking the opportunity to interact with the mental health clients. Making reports and documentation consumed much of the time hence frustrating me from perfecting. A patient with so many questions but time was insufficient to provide answers due to colossal work. As days went by I started learning how to talk to them and by assisting them, I gained a sense of satisfaction in my job. Therefore, to develop competency a nurse in practice should build experience and knowledge and therapeutic communication skills.
When nurses are in fear of the head nurse, and when they feel threatened they are scared of making mistakes since they lack enough experience and understanding to control the situation (Costello, Thomson and Jones, 2013). Consequently, when they get support and compassion from their colleagues and their head nurse, they have a sense of usefulness, and they develop communication with staff hence improving their competence at work. Furthermore, the personnel sometimes are very offensive, and they do not allow nurses in practice to engage in patient care. In that case, nurses have a feeling of mistrust since they are not given the essential roles to play in delivering nursing care hence limiting them to their responsibilities (Meadows, Farhall, Fossey, Grigg, McDermott and Singh, 2012).
Conclusions:
The person-centered and collaborative nursing practices have the same principle of respect and understanding to patients. Moreover, the person-centered method has been effective in achieving the effectiveness of operations of a healthcare facility and also satisfying the clients. However, for effective execution of the person-centered mental health practice, support is needed from the nurses, professionals, and policymakers.
Psychiatric nurses may have contrary understandings because of the new environment, colleagues, and patients and as a result, their competence is questionable to the nursing staff. Therefore, measures need to be taken to address the issue of anxiety, fear, and stress to make the psychiatric nursing attractive.
References
Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council. (2013), A national framework for recovery-oriented mental health services: policy and theory, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.
https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/B2CA4C28D59C74EBCA257C1D0004A79D/$File/recovpol.pdf
Australian College of Mental Health Nurses. (2013), Scope of practice of mental health nurses in Australia 2013, ACMHN, Canberra. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 2018, Mental health services in Australia:
Costello, L., Thomson, M. & Jones, K. (2013), Mental health and homelessness. Final report, Mental Health Council NSW, Sydney. Department of Health and Ageing. 2013, National practice standards for the mental health workforce. Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.
Department of Health and Ageing. (2009), National mental health policy, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra. https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/mental-pubs-n-pol08
Happell, B., Cowin, L., Roper, C., Lakeman, R. & Cox, L. (2013), Introducing mental health nursing: a service user-oriented approach, 2nd and Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Hungerford, C., Hodgson, D., Clancy, R., Monisse-Redman, M., Bostwick, R. & Jones, T. (2015), Mental health care: an introduction for health professionals in Australia, Wiley, Milton.
Meadows, G., Farhall, J., Fossey, E., Grigg, M., McDermott, F. & Singh, B. (2012), Mental health in Australia: collaborative community practice, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.
National Mental Health Commission. (2013), A contributing life: the 2013 national report card on mental health and suicide prevention, NMHC, Sydney.
https://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov.au/media/94321/Report_Card_2013_full.pdf
Slade, M. (2013), 100 ways to support recovery: a guide for mental health professionals, 2nd edn, Rethink Mental Illness, London. https://www.rethink.org/media/704895/100_ways_to_support_recovery_2nd_edition.pdf
policies
Slade, M. & Longden, E. (2015), the empirical evidence about mental health and recovery: how likely, how long, what helps, MI Fellowship, Victoria.
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