Photo by Ricky Esquivel on Pexels.com

CHAPTER 1 – NOTES FROM THE DEEP – ¹

What happened post Francis?

It would be lovely to believe everyone in the nursing profession had a voice to be listened too, but alas on some subject matters I am not so sure if this is the case. Arguably since the ‘Francis Report’ there is increasingly a looming question to whether the nature of care and safety on a national scale has really improved?

It is I am sure a complex matter and one which needs to be carefully considered and debated in reference to specific subject matters. And mental health nursing education in context of proficiencies, skills and the priorities of both is considered a pertinent subject for safety and care. The relevancy and concerning priorities of intravenous care, venepuncture, cannulation, intaosseous drilling and manual evacuation are some of the proficiencies to be achieved by mental health nursing students. Whilst these proficiencies can quite rightly be debated as important there still is the question to how significant are they overall for mental health nursing. The debate perhaps has been stifled a little by a further recent demand to ensure student nurses are capable of providing appropriate physical observations. Yet whilst physical observations are considered essential, has the debate for increasing standardised skills eclipsed the space and priority learning necessary for mental health nursing. Perhaps even further to this is the concern to whether task orientation has taken over the need to understand delicate processes of mental support, which do not always fit in to nice and neat tick boxes with signatures.

In a priority of what presents as task standardisation there is a reasonable concern to what this means for both therapeutic and/or safe care. There are great debates I am sure which supports how well students enjoy the completion of standardised skills and proficiencies but this tioo may need criticism in terms of dwarfing and limiting what is taught and how this limits the cognition of students to importantly see beyond them. Eventually does such an approach by the regulator also limit the ability for mental health nursing lecturers/academics of the future to see beyond a usual scope of what is put forward by the regulator.

The questions of creativity and to make do with the proficiencies provided as they are now, seems to be a short change of what is possible for mental health nursing education. Creativity arguably is only as good as the limits one is provided and this is a concern the regulator has perhaps ignored. In this sense of limitation the composition of the regulator in terms of what professions have made decisions on proficencies is quintessential to know. It can reasonably be assumed the nature of what has been agreed upon doesn’t appear to make sense in context of what should be consoderable mental health nursing input.

At times it seems the whole nursing profession has stumbled from one national issue to another. It could be all too easily to lament the present depressing view and only hope mental health nursing can navigate it’s small part away from a much larger nursing field (which can threaten to consume all others).The lament; if only the most senior captains (HEIs’) and admirals (NMC) listened to their specialised crews (the profession),. I go further, the ghost voices of the crews seem to reach out in the fog of night, but there is little of what appears to be the right calls in return. In these times and with honesty it seems difficult to ignore the fact that the Mental Health profession has indeed become worryingly divided between some professors and frontline arcademics, of which the regulator has perhaps unknowingly encouraged. Some may already suggest whether a path has now been set, which will lose the profession and doeth follow the path of Australia.

On speaking of such issues may unfortunately present as oppositional to the regulator’s ability to set the right direction and pace of change. But nether less the subject does highlight a larger debate to whether the regulator’s current political agenda has truly lost what matters and that is the nature of what competent direct care should be comprised of as priorty.

All the best from just another ghost voice….

.

Some Late-Night Thoughts On What I argue as Problematic Aspects Of The Nursing And Midwifery Council (NMC) Code and Standards Relating To Mental Health Nursing

1. 
   Fotenote – This blog (herein) does not suppose or dare necessitate the same as a view expressed by a whole or in any grand part of a profession. This blog is simply for the reader to entertain their own thoughts, whether this resonates or otherwise. Nor does this blog equate an academic piece of work but it may correlate.with academic or/and professional sentiments within its correct domain. As a blog it can be roughly stewn or not perfectly constructed in comparison to an academic piece of work, but one of its benefits is to arguably and speedily produce a read of interest often related to a greater subject matter. ↩︎