Mental Healthcare in Nursing Assignment

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH IN NURSING
MENTAL HEALTH IN NURSING
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

MENTAL HEALTH IN NURSING
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Introduction:
The purpose of the essay is to critically reflect on an incident experienced during clinical
placement in the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). Additionally, this essay aims to assess
personal and professional skills developed during the clinical placement. This essay enables me
to link practice experiences to theory and contemporary evidence-based practice. For reflecting
on the clinical incident experienced in the clinical placement, a reflective model such as Gibb’s
reflection cycle will be used. As discussed by Li et al. (2020), it is the most suitable tool for
reflecting the clinical incidents experienced and it enables registered nurses to evaluate the skills
required to involve in effective clinical practice. Hence, this reflective model has emerged as the
most effective strategy for promoting personal development as well as professional of
independent professionals (Tawanwongsr and Phenwan, 2019) . This model uses six consecutive
stages such as description, feeling, analysis, evaluation, and conclusion and action plan for
reflecting on the clinical incident. Each stage of Gibb’s reflective cycle will be discussed in
details in the following paragraphs. In order to comply with the Nursing and Midwifery Council
(NMC) Code of Professional Conduct guidelines (2008a) and to maintain the confidentiality of
the patient, altered name of the patient will be used throughout this essay.
Discussion:
Description:
This section of Gibb’s reflective model will shed a light into a clinical incident
encountered during placement of clinical incident. The clinical incident I will be reflecting on
occurred during the placement as a registered nurse Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).
During the placement in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in a hospital where the service
users have severe mental health conditions, I encountered Mr J, a patient diagnosed with

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psychosis. Mr J was transferred into the ward under section 3 of the mental health Act 2007.
During the first week of his treatment, he was consuming his medication as per the medication
chart and properly communicated with his peers in the psychiatric ward. However, suddenly he
stopped taking his medications and kept to himself in his room. Moreover, he refused to come to
the communal area for his food. He refused to attend his ward rounds and refused to the
community area. It was a significant concern for the healthcare professionals in charge who were
taking care of him. While my practice assessor was informed regarding the concern of Mr J, my
assessor attended him. My practice assessor approached him for communication so that concern
of the patient can be obtained. However, he refused to talk to my practice assessor.
Feeling:
This section of Gibb’s reflective model will explore the thought process and feeling
experienced during the clinical placement and explore different aspects of the clinical incident.
Prior to the clinical experience, I was mindful to involve in the effective nursing practice as I was
new to the experience of handling of psychiatric patients, especially patient under section 3 of
the mental health Act 2007. I was curious to learn a range of different skills required for handling
patients with severe mental health issues such as psychosis in this context. I excited to observe
the patient as during the first week of his treatment, he was consuming his medication and
properly communicated with his peers in the psychiatric ward similar to other patients. However,
I was nervous and apprehensive when he stopped taking his medications and kept to himself in
his room. I was concern that without proper consumption of the medication and food will
aggravate his mental health and worsen his psychosis. I was also a concern when my practice
assessor approached him for communication but he refused to communication. It made me
release that as a registered nurse it is a fundamental obligation of the nursing professionals to