There is nothing more satisfying than nursing someone through illness or injury and seeing them make a complete recovery. This may be one of the reasons why so many choose to earn their degree and become a registered nurse. You can take many different roads when considering nursing, depending on what you want out of your nursing career. One of the options you could choose to look into, and one, which can be very rewarding, is becoming a mental health nurse.What does a career in mental health entail?As with any nursing position, the main job of a nurse working in this field is provide care for those who need it. In the case of being a mental health nurse, this specialized nursing area focuses on those individuals who have mental disorders. The nurse could be involved in a wide range of areas such as:
Providing emergency psychiatric care and services
Providing assessments of those suffering from mental disorders
Working on treatment plans and ensuring the plans are carried out
Continually managing patient care
Educate patients, family and friends on matters relating to mental health problems
Be asked to work as the consultant on a case involving a mental disorders
What kind of mental health issues would I deal with?Again, there can be a wide range of mental health issues covered as part of your job when going into this career. You could expect to work in areas such as:
Schizophrenia – this disorder causes an individual’s sense of reality to become abnormal. They may hallucinate or suffer from delusion
Bipolar disorder – causes a drastic change of mood in an individual, from elevated mood to depression
Depression – low mood or low self-esteem, changes in appetite, loss of interest or even suicidal thoughts
Dementia – decline in cognitive functions, normally associated with old age but may occur at anytime
When going into this choice of career there are many interventions that could be used depending on the area you are working in and the level of the individual’s mental disorder.Administering medication – one part of your everyday job in as a mental health nurse could consist of administering and monitoring medication to patients. Response to medication would have to be monitored, along with any side effects from prescribed drugs.Physical care for the patient – part of the job may be monitoring and helping with the physical care of the patient. Levels of hygiene, the amount of sleep, nutrition and diet may all be monitored closely.Electro-convulsive therapy – the mental health nurse may be asked to assist with therapy, which may include preparing the patient for the session and monitoring them whilst they are in recovery. However, this form of treatment is generally only used as the last resort and after all other possibilities of treatment have been looked into.If you feel that you have the level of concern and compassion for this area of nursing, then you should consider a career as a mental health nurse.