Mental Health and Learning Disability

Introduction

Mental health and learning disabilities in children are significant aspects of the healthcare system. We all have mental health, but a good state of our mental health helps us to prosper. Mental health entails our social, psychological, and emotional well-being.  On the other hand, a learning disability is a situation whereby a child experiences difficulty in some areas of learning, even when their overall motivation or intelligence is unaffected.  This article evaluates some of the underlying issues that impact child nursing, learning disability, and mental health system; and the roles nurses play in these fields. Most people confuse mental health disorders with a learning disability. However, mental health condition is a temporary condition that can affect anyone at any time in their life and can be treated. On the other hand, a learning disability is a permanent condition that affects children. Approximately 60% of all the unfortunate mental health illnesses are influenced by learning disabilities.

Question 1: How do you think the learning you have undertaken during this exploration will influence your future practice as a nurse?

Mental health and learning disabilities in children is significantly essential in nursing. Thus, better psychological management of patients, tasks, and day to day shifts are all vital aspects of the nursing profession. The difference between great nurses and good nurses usually is not concerned with skills but through processes behind the skills, empathy, and the ability to act intuitively on the daily tasks.  I have learned all these aspects of nursing during this exploration, and I believe they will help me in my future nursing practice. Additionally, I have learned several critical lessons that enhance my service delivery as a nurse:

1. Considering Myself

Nurses have to have the mindset of caregivers who often lookout for the needs of others. This quality is wonderful but can be risky if the care-taking predispositions come at the expense of the mental health of the nurse. For instance, in the self-help psychology topic, the nurses must wear oxygen masks on themselves first, especially when it is the job of the nurse to put the oxygen masks on the patients. However, this does not always apply to nurses, but it is critical to recall that if I fail to take care of myself, I may not be able to take care of other patients. Therefore, when dealing with patients, I should always strive to ensure my mental situation, emotions, energy, and needs are my priority.

1. Processing My Emotions

Sometimes nursing can feel psychologically relentless, whereby in one shift, one can experience many psychological events like witnessing a patient die and close family members of patients yelling at the nurses. There is indeed stress and frustrations in every career, but at the nursing career, the frustrations and anxiety may be experienced instantaneously, and often at higher intensities. These frustrations and stresses may push one to their psychological limits, whereby nurses who do not process their emotions may end up affecting them in the future. Thus, mental health depends on working through even painful emotions and frustrations.

• Creating Post-Shift Rituals

Another important lesson I have learned from the evaluation is that separating personal life and work life is vital to mental health, especially in the nursing profession. A nursing career can sometimes be very demanding and can lead to exhaustion and acrimony towards patients. Therefore, separation of patient care and family care is vital in managing these challenges.

1. Carving out some time for self

Beyond the creation of personal rituals, it is crucial to consider the amount of time one has for themselves away from the work schedules and responsibilities. Whatever time one has, they should be able to rest and review themselves and their mental health.

1. Mental health care should be patient-centered

It is critical to center mental care services and care for learning disabled children to patients. Anything that is done to the patient should be critical to their well-being and includes their mental health state.

Question 2: What skills do you think are transferable from each of the alternative fields, and how would you use them in your adult nursing role?

Nurses are involved in clinical and healthcare activities in different settings, including mental healthcare nursing, learning disability nursing, and acute nursing. All these nursing settings require nurses to have particular skills that help them in performing their jobs. Most of these skills are transferable in all the nursing settings and may include; excellent interpersonal skills, care, compassion and empathy with patients, team-working skills, verbal and written communication skills, and resilience, stamina, and patience.

1. Excellent interpersonal skills

Interpersonal skills comprise of tactics and behaviors that a person employs to interact effectively. These skills enable nurses to work well with other nurses in service delivery. Interpersonal skills vary from effective communication, listening skills, ability to negotiate effectively, problem-solving skills, and decision-making skills. In the nursing profession, interpersonal skills are vital since they help nurses to develop and foster strong working relationships with other nurses and patients. Additionally, these skills help nurses to enhance team productivity.

1. Care, compassion and empathy with patients

Expressing empathy, compassion, and sympathy are considerably powerful and effective in building patient trust, calming anxiety, and improving the overall health outcomes. According to Jeffrey (2016), empathy and compassion are linked with better adherence to medications, increased patients satisfaction, reduced mistakes, decreased malpractices, as well as promoting patient satisfaction. It is reported that receiving compassionate care from nurses help in recoveries that include an enhanced sense of responsibility and control over healthcare.

1. Team-working skills

The current health care system is built around a multi-disciplinary method for patient care. According to Davis (2017), nurses work closely together with specialists and physicians to offer a well-organized complete care system. Hence, teamwork is vital in the enhancement of positive patient outcomes and effective communication. In the mental healthcare setting, nurses should ensure that patients are satisfied during their interactions by embracing teamwork techniques of healthcare delivery (Davis, 2017). On the other hand, dealing with children with learning disabilities requires special attention, which can only be provided by different specialized nursing teams. Therefore, teamwork enhances positive patient care experiences.

1. Verbal and written communication skills

Effective communication is important in nursing in all the fields and all the approaches such as health enhancement, education, rehabilitation, therapy, treatment, and prevention. Kourkouta and Papathanasiou (2014) underpin that dealing with mental health patients and children with learning disabilities requires effective communication skills and attention to comprehend the concerns of the patients. Additionally, surveys have indicated that effective communication between patients and nurses have considerable benefits like the contribution to the ability of the nurses to offer specialized and individualized care. The mental health patients and Person With Learning Disabilities (PWLD) have special needs that require nurses to meet thought effective communication. Those needs include confidence, love, and feeling of safety, which are vital to the recovery and treatment of patients.

1. Resilience, stamina, and patience

Resilience, stamina, and patience are all skills necessary in healthcare service delivery. Resilience is the capability of an individual to cope successfully or to bounce back from adversities. Resilient nurses overcome their day to day frustrations and stress through their resilience (Delgado et al., 2017). Therefore, these nurses can develop better mechanisms for coping with the difficulties they experience in their profession. Some of the most valuable skills contributing to resilience and patience include; self-awareness, accessing and sustaining positive emotions, skills to mentally let go, and the skills to physically let go.

Question 3: How does gaining an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each field (child nursing, learning disability, and mental health) improve inter-professional and collaboration practice, and how would this benefits patient safety?

Gaining a comprehensive knowledge of the roles and responsibilities of child nursing, learning disability, and mental health can improve inter-professional and collaboration practices in several ways.  Hughes (2008) underscores that the healthcare system inter-professional collaboration helps in the enhancement of patient experiences, prevention of medical errors, better patient outcomes, and reduction of healthcare costs. Moreover, inter-professional collaborations help healthcare facilities to save finances by shoring up operational inefficiencies and workflow redundancies. Furthermore, interprofessional collaborations hold the potential for decreasing errors in medications and meeting the needs of the varied populations.

Inter-professional collaboration can be enhanced through the education of nurses, doctors, as well as other healthcare professionals, and through retraining of the healthcare providers to work in collaboration. Tami and Tracy (2018) state that nurses recognize complex and multiple work environment elements influencing the patient-nurse outcomes such as staffing resources, effective communication, teamwork, job stress, and anxiety, workloads, as well as the quality of management and leadership.

Collaborative practices in healthcare systems ensue when several employees from various professional qualifications offer complete services through working with communities, patients, and their family members to deliver the highest quality of healthcare to the patients across different settings. Fleming and Willgerodt (2017) outline that case management and care coordination are some of the ways by which Inter-professional collaborations can be operationalized. Consequently, both of these practices are often operationalized by nurses. Therefore, case management is required in mental health facilities to meet the unique individual needs of the patients. Case management can be defined as a joint process of advocating, evaluating, coordinating care, facilitating, planning, and assessing options and services that could meet the needs of the patients and their family members through communication to enhance quality healthcare outcomes.

Care coordination, on the other hand, can be defined as a deliberate structuring of the operations of patient care between two or more respondents that are involved in the care program to enhance suitable healthcare delivery. Care coordination also enhances patient-centered care (Fleming & Willgerodt, 2017). Patient-centered care entails; (1) treating patients with dignity and respect, (2) providing coordinated treatments, care, and support, (3) offering personalized treatment and care, and (4) enabling service users to recognize and create their abilities and strengths to become independent in life.

Patient safety is at the center of healthcare systems and should be enhanced by the nursing professionals and all the healthcare providers. Additionally, all the healthcare processes should seek to perpetuate patient safety in the nursing environments, especially in the mental healthcare setting and the children care units (Hughes, 2008). Some of the ways through which inter-professional collaborations can ensure patients safety include; (1)establishing safety and healthcare management systems that enhance patients safety, (2) building a rapid patient response system, (3) practicing effective nursing leadership, (4) practicing patient-centered care, and adopting leadership and Evidence-Based Management practices and processes.

Question 4: From the video and resources you have watched, please identify key themes. Discuss the differences, similarities, challenges, and anything that you were not expecting?

In the videos, several themes can be identified. Some of the topics include;

1. Misconceptions about learning disorders
2. Characteristics and skills required for nursing professionals

• The significance of interprofessional collaborations in the healthcare systems

1. Opportunities available for nursing professionals
2. Importance of understanding the roles and responsibilities of child nursing, learning disability, and mental health.

For the most protracted time, a Learning disability has been misconceived concerning the relationship it has with mental disorders. Most people mistake learning disability for mental disorder while there are considerable distinctions between the two conditions. First, most people have failed to appreciate that people with learning disabilities are just as intelligent and smart are other people except for the difference in learning and thinking. Second, many children who have learning disabilities do not get enough specialized support they require in life, especially in school. Third, children with learning disabilities are more susceptible to drop out of schools or get expelled due to their condition.

Nursing professional requires specialized training and skills to help them handle these vulnerable people in society. All these nursing settings need nurses to have particular skills that help them in performing their jobs. Most of these skills are transferable in all the nursing settings and may include; excellent interpersonal skills, care, compassion and empathy with patients, team-working skills, verbal and written communication skills, and resilience, stamina, and patience.

Inter-professional collaborations have significant impacts on the healthcare setting and the success of care delivery. Inter-professional and collaboration practices help in the enhancement of patient experiences, prevention of medical errors, better patient outcomes, and reduction of healthcare costs. Also, inter-professional collaborations help healthcare facilities to save finances by supporting operational inefficiencies and workflow redundancies. Furthermore, interprofessional collaborations hold the potential for decreasing errors in medications and meeting the needs of the varied populations.

The nursing profession still has a vast potential to attract mental health professionals and caregivers. In the videos, it is noted that there is still a considerable discrepancy in the ratio of the nursing professionals to that of the patients. Therefore, many people need to train for the nursing profession to fill this gap. Mental health and learning disabilities in children are significant aspects of the healthcare system. We all have mental health, but a good state of our mental health helps us to prosper. Mental health entails our social, psychological, and emotional well-being.

References

Davis, C. (2017). Teamwork and the Patient Care Experience, Nursing Made Incredibly Easy, 15(5), p. 4. DOI: 10.1097/01.NME.0000521812.07765.11.

Delgado, C., Upton, D., Ranse, K., Furness, T., & Foster, K. (2017). Nurses’ Resilience and the Emotional Labour of Nursing Work: An Integrative Review of Empirical Literature. International Journal of Nursing Studies. 70. 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2017.02.008.

Fleming, R., and Willgerodt, M..A. (2017) “Interprofessional Collaborative Practice and School Nursing: A Model for Improved Health Outcomes” OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing Vol. 22, No. 3, Manuscript 2. DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol22No03Man02

Hughes R.G. (2008). Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); Chapter 2. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2672/.

Jeffrey, D. (2016). Empathy, sympathy, and compassion in healthcare: Is there a problem? Is there a difference? Does it matter? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 109(12), 446–452. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076816680120.

Kourkouta, L., & Papathanasiou, I. V. (2014). Communication in nursing practice. Material socio-medica, 26(1), 65–67. https://doi.org/10.5455/msm.2014.26.65-67.

Tami L.J. and Tracy J.P. (2018). Interprofessional Collaboration Improves Healthcare: Reflections on Nursing Leadership. Available at: https://www.reflectionsonnursingleadership.org/features/more-features/interprofessional-collaboration-improves-healthcare.