Reflective Report: Mental Health and Addiction in Nursing Practice

This report presents a reflective analysis of a nursing case study involving a patient named Bill, who struggles with mental illness and alcohol addiction. The assignment, based on a scenario, delves into the events, emotions, and thoughts experienced by a nursing professional. It explores the actions needed to manage the patient's condition, including the importance of immediate intervention, such as admission to a rehabilitation center. The report emphasizes the emotional challenges faced by nurses in such situations, highlighting the need for emotional control and the development of effective clinical skills. It also covers learning from the event, teamwork, and application of the lessons learned for future practice, focusing on improving clinical decision-making, patient monitoring, and the delivery of quality care, while referencing various books and journals to support the discussions. The report emphasizes on the need for nurses to reflect on their practice to enhance their knowledge and skills to effectively work with people experiencing mental illness and addiction.

Nursing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Event.......................................................................................................................................1
Emotions.................................................................................................................................2
Thoughts.................................................................................................................................2
Learning..................................................................................................................................3
Applications............................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Nursing reflected practice refers to evaluate practices in order to identify strength and
weaknesses for improving skill as well as knowledge level in nursing. It includes the criterion of
boosting up the clinical skill and knowledge level which facilitates to deliver appropriate care
services for wellbeing of patients (Howatson-Jones, 2016). In context of this project, it is based
on the case study of patient named Bill suffering from mental illness and alcohol addiction. This
report will focus on event and emotions related to given case study and actions required to be
taken by a nurse. It will also include the thoughts of improving clinical skill to deal with addicted
patients with psychological disorders. The learning from specific clinical event and actions taken
for the same along with its application is given below.
MAIN BODY
Event
Considering the condition of Bill, it has been analysed that his condition is critical due to having
mental illness with alcohol addiction and violent behaviour. It is necessary to admit them in
mental care home in order to provide proper facilities and medications in order to make them
wellbeing. However, it is very important to provide medications of treating the addiction of
alcohol as it impact negatively on mental health condition. Bill has yelling at people and waving
with drunk bottle along with having dishevelled condition which requires support from health
and social care providers to improve his overall condition. It is very important for nursing staff to
fulfil their needs and provide medications with therapies for supporting Bill to overcome with
addiction of alcohol as it is favourable to improve the psychological state of them easily. The
immediate action was to admit patient in rehabilitation centre in respect of providing him care
and treatment to making physically as well as mentally well (Horton-Deutsch and Sherwood,
2017). When patient such kind of patient shout then it is quite fearful but it is very important to
learn the effective way of dealing with such people. A nurse should remain mentally prepare to
take immediate action to calm such individuals so that they can carry out clinical procedures in
more effective as well as efficient manner. In case of Bill, it is necessary to make him calm first
then medications should be provided. It is necessary to make a try for communication with him
to increase comfort level which facilitates to gain better outcomes of treatment respectively.
1

Emotions
Bill has fearful behaviour which is required to be tolerated and behave effectively to gain
confidence of patient. Being a nurse, it is really feel bad to observe such condition of people
which create a feeling of helping them to make their overall condition stable. Basically, it is
important to provide treatment for their mental illness along with treating the addiction of
alcohol which helps to make Bill completely healthy. It will facilitate to provide him counselling
and make him confident to spend rest of life easily. A nurse has emotions to help clinically for
improving health condition of Bill appropriate which leads to stable life for them. Being a nurse,
it is major responsibility to monitor patient as addiction may develop violent activities or harmful
attempts. It is necessary for maintain safety factor for an individual while providing the care
facilities for their wellbeing (Goulet, Larue and Alderson, 2016). It is required to make sure that
a person should not attempt to suicide or any kind of self-harm or injure others.
On the other hand, it is essential for nursing staff to remain careful while dealing with patients
like Bill as they can also harm care providers due to their internal fear or uncomforted condition.
It includes the feelings of nurse working in mental healthcare settings as they also get distressed
and disturbed while dealing with critical patients. Basically, it has been identified that nurse
becomes extra emotional sometimes which it is required to control emotions and focus on
practicality that helps to deliver appropriate care to patients. It is observed that single
complicated mental patient is more than enough to make nurse stressed because they violent
behaviour so that they should remain separate from others. It is very important for nurses to
remove all the objects and materials from wards of addicted and violent person like Bill to ensure
avoidance of self-harm.
Thoughts
Considering the case of Bill, I have analysed that being a nurse, it is very important to control
emotions and focus on clinical practices in order to provide appropriate treatment for addressing
respective psychological problems. It includes the way of maintaining self-skills and abilities in
terms of boosting up capabilities to deal with mental patients with addictive as well as violent
behaviours (Choperena and et. al., 2019). However, it is necessary to consider severe strategies
for developing effective skills and knowledge level to improve performance on mental healthcare
settings are given here. It requires to maintain good health & fitness for remained focussed on
clinical practices and ability to emphasize with people to deliver appropriate care for wellbeing
2

of patients. Meanwhile, a nurse to deal with similar patient should develop good understanding
of theories of mental health and illness which helps to increase recovery rate of individuals to
make them disease free as soon as possible.
In addition to this, it includes the criterion of developing skills of excellent teamwork skills
because cooperation is very important with colleagues to deliver appropriate care services for
wellness of individuals like Bill. It is quite difficult to deal with addictive patients for which
communication should be effective and nurse must have resilience as well as stamina. However,
it has been analysed that a nurse should work on skills of providing accurate dosage of
medications and make sure to avoid medicines from which addiction may occur. It is necessary
to monitor the requirement of medications and their actual cause along with monitoring patient
regularly to ensure that a person should not attempt any wrong practice (Chang and Daly, 2019).
Moreover, it is required to gain knowledge about mostly reasons behind such conditions of
patients which generally contains boredom, stress, money issues, relationship problems, certain
sights & smells and anger.
Learning
The event happened is helpful to learn about many aspects like ways of dealing with critical
mental patient and relevant cases with addictions. It is observed that different clinical skills are
required to deal with people having addiction of alcohol. Basically, it helps to learn about
effective practices which should be used by nursing staff working in mental healthcare settings in
order to perform with proper stamina and focus for delivering appropriate care services for
wellness of them. It is required for nurses to maintain their own health so that they can perform
with more concentration to treatment psychological disorders and addictive behaviours (Jacobs,
2016). However, one more interesting fact is learned that addiction affects negatively on mental
state due to which addictive behaviours are required to be controlled first and them provide the
medications or therapies in order to address the psychological illnesses accordingly. It is
necessary for nursing staff to use effective technology for monitoring condition of such patient
for 24*7 for initial days until the condition becomes stable enough. I have learned that teamwork
skills are very important to work cooperatively with colleagues in terms of providing accurate
care services for wellbeing of individuals like Bill.
3

Applications
Considering my learning in selected case of Bill, it can be considered as critical event at clinical
settings which is responsible to make me learn variety of aspects which are helpful in future
practices. It includes the criterion of improving skills in order to control emotions and focus on
clinical procedures favourable in specific mental patient to support them towards recovery.
However, the ways of maintain focus and health maintained by nurses is favourable to maintain
own condition strong enough to deal with violent and addictive patients. It is helpful to utilise
effective strategies for dealing with person of violent behaviour by providing medication to
control the same along with addressing the addiction of them. Moreover, it is necessary to treat
the addiction first which is suitable for making mental health condition stable and provide
immediate recovery from the same.
On the other hand, my learning from this event has future applications for enhancing decision
making at clinical settings about medications and therapies. It is helpful to provide accurate care
services by monitoring patient in more effective manner. However, it will provide support to
improve my performance at the time of working in team with proper cooperation as well as
coordination with colleagues. It will facilitate to deliver better quality of services and gain
improved patient outcomes.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment, it has been concluded that nursing reflective practices plays an
important role to determine weakness or performance and aspects required to be improved. It is
helpful to provide direction for boosting up clinical skills and knowledge level for delivering
appropriate care services. However, it includes that different clinical events are helpful to make
nurses learn many things for improving future practices to provide appropriate facilities for
wellness of psychological patients with addictive behaviours.
4

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Howatson-Jones, L. (2016). Reflective practice in nursing. Learning Matters.
Horton-Deutsch, S., & Sherwood, G. D. (2017). Reflective practice: Transforming education and
improving outcomes (Vol. 2). Sigma Theta Tau.
Goulet, M. H., Larue, C., & Alderson, M. (2016, April). Reflective practice: A comparative
dimensional analysis of the concept in nursing and education studies. In Nursing forum (Vol. 51,
No. 2, pp. 139-150).
Choperena, A. & et. al. (2019). Nursing narratives and reflective practice: a theoretical
review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(8), 1637-1647.
Chang, E., & Daly, J. (2019). Transitions in Nursing eBook: Preparing for Professional
Practice. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Jacobs, S. (2016). Reflective learning, reflective practice. Nursing2019, 46(5), 62-64.
5