Mental Health Nursing: Reflection on Nursing as a Practice Essay

This essay provides a reflection on mental health nursing practice, drawing insights from Bishop and Scudder's work on nursing as a practice rather than an art or science. It emphasizes the importance of the nurse-patient relationship in fostering patient engagement and person-centered care. The author, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, highlights how understanding nursing as a practice promotes healing and wellness through collaborative approaches. The reflection underscores the significance of community-based mental health support, early intervention, and critical thinking skills in providing quality care and promoting mental health literacy. The essay references various studies to support the claims, highlighting the relationship between critical thinking and self-efficacy in mental health nurses.

0Running head: MENTAL HEALTH NURSE
Mental Health Nurse
Name of the Student
Name of University
Author’s note

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MENTAL HEALTH NURSE
After reading this article published by Bishop and Scudder (1997), I as a psychiatric
mental health nurse practitioner, was able to draw certain important conclusions in the domain of
mental health nursing profession. My first realization was nursing, the professional has a huge
sense of morale in comparison to any other profession. It is an art of recognition of individual
relationships between two people and this in turns give us the basic foundation of the mental
health nursing especially in psychiatric care. This concept goes in sync with the idea proposed by
Hibbard and Greene, (2013), which states that the inherent relationship between nurse and
patient helps to increase the patient engagement and this in turn helps the patient to gain
confidence and thereby actively participating into the healthcare plan. It is this artful practice of
nursing profession as proposed by Bishop and Scudder (1997), helps in the generation of person
centered care.
The said understanding about the nursing profession from the article of Bishop and
Scudder (1997) helped me gained proficiency as a mental health care nurse. It helped me to
understand that nursing is a practice that fosters healing and wellness through communally
developed ways either in the field of science or creative care. This enlightment will help me to
concentrate more to foster care on community settings. This community based mental health
support will help to promote literacy in mental health and this in turn will help to promote early
intervention in mental health and awareness against common psychosis related disorders (Jorm,
2012). The work of Bishop and Scudder (1997) also entails in favor of critical thinking which I
think is another important parameter of mental health nursing in psychiatric settings. According
to Gloudemans, Schalk, and Reynaert (2013), there lies a strong relationship between critical
thinking skills and self-efficacy beliefs in mental health nurse which help them to procure quality
care to the patients.

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MENTAL HEALTH NURSE
References
Bishop, A. H., & Scudder, J. R. (1997). Nursing as a practice rather than an art or a
science. Nursing Outlook, 45(2), 82-85.
Gloudemans, H. A., Schalk, R. M., & Reynaert, W. (2013). The relationship between critical
thinking skills and self-efficacy beliefs in mental health nurses. Nurse education
today, 33(3), 275-280.
Hibbard, J. H., & Greene, J. (2013). What the evidence shows about patient activation: better
health outcomes and care experiences; fewer data on costs. Health affairs, 32(2), 207-
214.
Jorm, A. F. (2012). Mental health literacy: empowering the community to take action for better
mental health. American Psychologist, 67(3), 231.