Part One: Professional interactions. Mental Health Practice. (Coursework Sample)

1. Write your experiences, a minimum of five entries is required. (Mental Rehabilitation)
- Patient 1: work with patient with chronic depression and suicidal ideation, encourage patient to talk, participate in activities.
She denied to get out of the room, I discussion with the RN and her about the situation.
- Patient 2: work with patient with major depression, History of unstable angina T2DM. I take patient to the hospital to do ECT. I make sure that patient remove all the jewelry, make sure patient fasting, I observed patient while doing ECT in the treatment room. Doctor explained procedure to me. During procedure, nurses found difficulty to find patient’s vein for cannular. It took 15 minutes to find it. ECT was successful. Patient was moved to recover room. Patient gain conciuosness and vital sign sable. Her arm has bruise resulting from find vein. I gave her cold pack. I took patient back alongside with the RN to the mental facility. Patient remained loss memory, confused with people name. I advised her to have some rest within 24 hours after ECT according to ECT guideline
- Patient 3: schizophrenia, alcohol abuse, witnessing co-patient suicide. Behavior: aggressive, self- harm when un-well. I participated the meeting with social worker, RN, patient and his brother. This meeting is about his brother concern’s about patient’s behaviour which is unpredictable and unsafe. Since he does not follow his treatment plan and medication regime. Patient has been visiting the family home unannounced and on a more frequent basis. This made his brother concerned about his safety. This meeting I have an opportunity to share my ideas, for example advise patient to meet his brother somewhere in public place. And social worker also advised him to prove himself by register under NDIS. Meeting went well and both side happy
- Patient 4 : Particpated in patient’s review meeting with the Doctor, psychiatric and RN. Review progressing of patient to adjust treatment
- Patient 5 : Schzophinia patient, he distressed , confused with aggressive thoughts , intense eye contact. Not comply medication. And not let the nurses know when going out. I give medication to the patient, patient seem to not swallow medication as when he spoke it seems like he had something in his mouth. I asked patient to make sure you swallow the tablets but patient became aggressive to me. RN help me to calm him down
2. When you have finished making your journal entries, insert a new page and address the summary topics below.
a) How I feel about my experiences over the past weeks
b) What I have learned about myself and about primary health care and/or community nursing practice
c) What I feel most confident about, what I did well
d) What knowledge or skills do I need to build to enhance my practice at this stage of my nursing career?
e) One example of being aware of the need to work within my Scope of Practice is... (Ask advice from RN everytime if unsure)
I confident about communicate with the patient wih mental illness. Eventhough at first, I feel uncomfortable, I sought advice from the RN and doctor make me become more confidence.
I need to learn more about medication that have been used for mental patient