NURS6055: Reflective Journal on Mental Health Nursing in Acute Care

This document presents a reflective account of a mental health nurse's experiences and learning goals within the context of acute care, symptom management, and community settings. The reflection highlights the nurse's motivation for pursuing a career in mental health, emphasizing a desire to support individuals with mental health complications. The nurse outlines two personal goals focused on enhancing communication skills and improving practice-based learning through identifying personal strengths and deficiencies. The reflection also touches upon the importance of symptom management in clinical practice, aligning with professional codes of conduct, and emphasizes the value of cultural competence in community-based nursing interventions. The nurse expresses a commitment to understanding the historical background of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and collaborating with healthcare professionals to improve care delivery.

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH
Mental Health: Nursing Reflection
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1
MENTAL HEALTH
NURS6055
I am mental health nurse and have done my graduation in mental health in acute
care. I have more than one year of experience in mental health and acute care. Since from my
childhood, I had immense urge to work for the people who are suffering from mental
complications and that is the reason behind my enrolment in this course. The successful
completion of the course helped me enrich my knowledge in mental health nursing. It also
helped me understand that how proper management of symptoms is crucial in nursing care. I
practise strictly in accordance with the professional standards of Nursing and Midwifery
Board of Australia however; I am planning to enrich my skills as a mental health nurse via
refining my communication skills and practise-based learning improvement.
Two Personal Goals
Goal 1: Enrich the skills in effective communication in order to attain proficiency
verbal, non-verbal message, effective listening and responding.
SMART Goal
Specific I want to enrich my communication skills as it a crucial parameter for
mental health nursing
Meaningful This goal is important because it will help to refine my skills as a
nurse and at the same time will help me to connect with my patients
more effectively
Achievable I will enrol in a effective communication training crash course and
will examine my senior registered nurses during the duty in order to
study how they study
Realistic I know I can achieve this because, Regular exposure to work along

2
MENTAL HEALTH
with training will help me attain faster proficiency Plus I am
extremely determinant to excel in communication skills.
Time Span 6 months
Goal 2: Practise-based learning improvement via highlighting the personal strengths
and deficiencies
SMART Goal
Specific This goal is important because it will help me to work on the
deficiencies while helping me to attain refinement in my strength and
this as a whole will help me to provide quality care to my patients,
one of the important professional code of conduct of Nursing and
Midwifery Board of Australia
Meaningful This goal is important because it will help to refine my clinical
nursing skills
Achievable I will assist my seniors in providing quality treatment to patients
Realistic I know I can achieve this because, regular exposure to work will help
me attain enriched experience
Time Span 1 year
NURS6450
My main motivation behind undertaking the course of symptom management in
clinical practise is to learn the ethics of appreciation extended towards supporting people in
chronic symptoms management of mental health. This in turn goes with the professional code
of conduct of Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia that states that nurse must value

3
MENTAL HEALTH
informed decision making. My belief of symptom management goes with importance of
learning the theoretical perspectives of symptoms management while identifying the
relationship between nursing response towards symptom management and client system
outcomes. This learning connects with the ethical guidelines of Nursing and Midwifery
Board of Australia that states that nurse must value quality nursing care for all the patients.
My two goals in this domain of nursing is to study more papers based on evidence
based practice on patients experience on symptoms and to interact with in-patients on daily
basis to ascertain their psychological perspectives on symptoms management. The main
rationale behind these goals are: this will help me to ascertain patient perceptive towards pain
or symptom management while implementing best possible practise based on evidenced
based research.
NURS6095
I choose to enrol in this course because I belief that a nurse must practise in a
culturally competent manner and this exposure can only be achieved via participating in
community based nursing interventions. My goals which I plan to achieve via participating in
this practise is to attain excellence in understating the historical background of the aboriginals
residing in Australia (Torres-Strait Islander) and my second goal is to increase my
professional and personal capacity via working in collaboration with health care professionals
and non-government service providers.