Challenges and Cultural Safety in Mental Health Nursing

The assignment content discusses nursing care in mental health, focusing on the challenges of providing care to patients with diverse ethno-cultural backgrounds and varying mental disorders. The author emphasizes the importance of cultural safety, reflecting skills, and management skills in delivering effective mental health care. They also highlight the need for continuous improvement in nursing skills and the role of education in empowering patients and their families.

Nursing care in mental health
1.0. Introduction
Despite of ongoing lectures and tutorials before and after the sessions, I understood that there
exists a difference in the learnings and knowledge that I had on mental health. Across the
world, the mental health services (Prince et al., 2007), progress towards meeting the
challenge and needs have been slow in middle- and low-income countries (Saraceno et al.,
2007). The possible barriers that influence the mental health service include, the existing
public health priorities, resistance to decentralization of services, challenges to the delivery of
mental health services in primary health care settings, low numbers of trained professionals,
and the lack of effective leadership. Therefore, the health workforce who involve in the
services of patients with mental health should know the behavior of patients prior to initiation
of treatment and should be able to handle the patients. The nursing professional should
conduct a thorough study on how the public from a specific region is behaving. The extent to
which the public is following the instructions should be evaluated. However, the extent to
which the public obey the compliance can be influenced by the poverty and socioeconomic
status of the people. In addition, the cultural background and religious beliefs etc also play a
role in following the instructions. The migration of people from one region to other can
contribute for the diversified cultural development too. For instance, the migration may fall
into family and economic-class (Higginbottom et al., 2011). It is therefore axiomatic that
nurses in these nations care for diverse ethno-cultural groups and that this may present
challenges in respect of nursing care delivery.
2.0. Cultural safety in nursing
As a nurse, I would involve in taking care for mental health in Northern Territory of Australia
(Utopia), the culture, religious beliefs are relatively vulnerable as the population is from
diverse races (Anderson & Kowal, 2012). The culture of rural and urban public is entirely
different. The ethical aspects and spiritual aspects of public and typical attitudes force me to
learn and undergo for training. For instance, the personal values are different and directly
influenced by social values. Some of the individuals are emotional in taking decisions and
some are with inferiority complex. I notice that certain encouragement is required for the
public to prioritize the tasks, abilities to improve the decision-making capacity etc. Therefore,
the nurses who cater services in such area needs to be aware the background, teaching skills
to encourage the people so that they can perform better and in a planned manner. After
thorough understanding based on the evidences, an appropriate care model can be applied
such as ‘transcultural nursing’. ‘Multiculturalism’ is one of the model can be applied for the
people with diverse ethno-culture background. The social, scholarly, and moral development
known as multiculturalism has been immensely powerful in mental health. Its capacity to
reshape brain science has been because of its moral power, which gets from the engaging
quality of its points of incorporation, and shared appreciation (Fowers & Davidov, 2006).
Therefore, the nurses should understand the psychology of public to reshape the tendencies of
human beings who are with differences of attitudes.
3.0. Management skills
The development of the professional self is considered as the most essential component in
nursing and in social work training (Esther, 2010). As a mental health nurse, I need to work
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with all ages of patients with diverse psychiatric complications including depressive
disorders, anxiety, schizophrenia and personality disorders. The symptoms for each type of
disease could be varied. Regardless of where a mental health nurse works, education is
usually part of the job description. Nurses play a large role in educating patients and their
families on their mental health diagnoses and how to manage their illnesses. They may also
educate patients on medications they take and their side effects. Therefore, the continuous
improvements in nursing skills can help in handling the patients. As I had undergone for
training to learn skills in handling the mental health patients with diverse disorders. So, I feel
that it is not an issue to handle the patients. It is possible to handle the patients and provide
the intended care in terms of treatment. I had a chance to work in correctional facility other
than intensive care unit. In addition, the major advantage is being able to help someone deal
with a difficult diagnosis and overcome it. The limitation in mental health conditions can be
difficult to work with at times. Sometimes I may become angry or aggressive towards other
patients and staff, which can be stressful to deal with. Some patients show low recovery,
which can be upsetting and sometimes even frustrating.
4.0. Evaluation
Considering afore mentioned merits and demerits, I would like to implement the reflecting
skills that aid the individual with psychological disorders. I should focus on the client’s
perspective in terms of listening and understanding the problems of patients. Some patients
can express the symptoms verbally if they are well educated and able to express the
symptoms and some cannot express verbally due to low education background and inability
to express the symptoms via patient-centered communication. The main principle in using
reflective skills involves identifying the individual's center message and offering it back to
them in my own particular words. The compelling utilization of intelligent aptitudes can
encourage investigation, construct trust, and convey acknowledgment and comprehension to
the customer. From the implementation perspective a part from reflective skills, I would like
to implement the settings by prioritizing the activities and improving the nursing skills in
which I am deficit.
5.0 Conclusions and actions to be taken
Handling mental health patients is challenging to nurses. Multidimensional focus has to be
given in handling the patients with varying mental disorders. Adequate skills are needed in
handling and satisfying the patients. The skills improvement with periodic training can
facilitate me in improving the skills. In addition, the training for the improvement of soft
skills could facilitate me in handling diverse patients with varying complications. Of course,
various components that may affect on need setting including, the mastery of the medical
attendant; the patient's condition; the accessibility of assets; ward association; methods of
insight and models of consideration; the attendant patient relationship; and the intellectual
technique utilized by the medical caretaker to set needs. With experience, I believe that I
could gain adequate expertise in handling patients with diverse diseases.
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References
Anderson, H & Kowal, E (2012) Culture, history, and health in an Australian aboriginal
community: the case of utopia. Med Anthropol. 31(5), 438-57. doi:
10.1080/01459740.2011.636411.
Esther, U (2010) Awareness of self-a critical tool social work education 29(5) 523–538
retrieved from https://www.bu.edu/ssw/files/2010/10/Awareness-of-Self-A-Critical-
Tool.pdf
Fowers, B.J & Davidov, B.J. (2006). The virtue of multiculturalism: personal transformation,
character, and openness to the other. Am Psychol. 61(6), 581-94.
Higginbottom, G. M., Richter, M. S., Mogale, R. S., Ortiz, L., Young, S., & Mollel, O.
(2011). Identification of nursing assessment models/tools validated in clinical practice
for use with diverse ethno-cultural groups: an integrative review of the
literature. BMC Nursing, 10, 16. http://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6955-10-16
Prince, M., Patel, V., Saxena, S., Maj, M., Maselko, J., Phillips, M. R., & Rahman, A. (2007).
No health without mental health. The Lancet, 370(9590), 859–877.
Saraceno, B., van Ommeren, M., Batniji, R., Cohen, A., Gureje, O., Mahoney, J., Sridhar, D.,
& Underhill, C. (2007). Global Mental Health 5: Barriers to improvement of mental
health services in low-income and middle-income countries. The Lancet, 370(9593),
1164–1174
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