Importance of Collaborative Nurse-Consumer Relationship in Mental Health

Running head: HEALTH CARE
Health care
Name of the student:
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Author’s note

1HEALTH CARE
Introduction
Collaborative nurse-consumer relationship is an important competence for nurses to
ensure that respectful patient-centred care is provided and consumer-staff relationship is
strengthened. It is defined as the act of working cooperatively with health consumers, sharing
responsibility for problem solving and engaging in shared decision making to formulate patient
care plan (Isobel & Delgado, 2018). Engaging in collaborative practice is importance for mental
health nurse to interpret lived experience of people living with mental illness and narrow down
differences in each other’s understanding and knowledge related to mental illness. Lived
experience is the representation of first-person experiences and feelings related to an illness and
the knowledge that people get after living with an illness. Collaborative and consultative
approach to care is a professional expectation for mental health nurse so that they can work
closely with consumers and identify personal strength and challenges they face while dealing
with mental illness (Happell et al., 2019). Happell et al. (2015) states that understanding about
lived experience of mental illness is important to promote recovery focused care and address
disparities in care due to difference in perspective about mental illness. For example, when
mental health nurse are not aware about how mental health affects daily life of people, it can lead
to poor interpretation of behaviour of mentally ill patients and negative attitude towards them.
Hence, collaborative approach addresses these barriers in mental health care. This report aims to
explore the topic by discussing the reason for mental health nurses to gain understanding about
mental health patient’s experience of living with mental disorder. The report will give a personal
evaluation of behaviour or skills that needs improvement to engage in collaborative approach to
care with mental health consumers.

2HEALTH CARE
Importance of understanding mental health consumer’s lived experience of mental illness
for mental health nurse:
To fulfil the profession expectation of collaborative nurse-consumer relationship, it is
necessary for mental health nurse to be aware about the unique lived experience of mental illness
for individual consumers. The important of gaining knowledge in this area is that it will help
mental health nurse to avoid discriminating patients with mental disorder and rationalize the
reason for certain behaviour of patients. Past evidence shows high prevalence of stigma among
mental health nurse. Al-Awadhi et al. (2017) revealed that nurses had negative attitude towards
mental illness and because of their discriminatory attitude, it had harmful effect on the patients.
Therefore, stigma related to mental disorder can seriously undermine recovery of patient. Hence,
nursed need to explore lived experience of patients so that they develop positive attitude towards
patient and provide flexible and patient focused care.
The review done by van Wijngaarden, Alma and The (2019) regarding the lived
experience of patients with dementia displays the unique perception and experience of such
patients in society. Dementia is a condition associated with memory loss, confusion, loneliness,
mood swings and nervousness (Kales, Gitlin & Lyketsos, 2015). By analyzing the data related to
patient’s experience following diagnosis of dementia, the study revealed that dementia patients
were strongly opposed by the objectifying gaze of other people in the community. Stigmatization
related to dementia was the most disturbing element of living with the disease and this created
uncertainty about interpersonal contact with others. This experience suggests that dementia
patient expect a safe and accepting environment around them (Hung et al., 2017). However, they
are affected by sense of marginalization and alienation due to unrealistic response of people.
The significance of this experience of illness is that it can help mental health nurse to understand