Wednesday twenty first February 2024 marks the sixth anniversary of the birth within the UKvol annual Mental Health Nurse Day. The day promotes and celebrates the unique and beneficial role that mental health nurses play in health and wellbeing.
There are roughly 300,000 mental health nurses around the globe they usually constitute the biggest proportion of the mental health care workforce answerable for patient care1. Mental health nurses work in a wide range of settings and with increasing demand for mental health care and services around the globe, there’s an urgent call for a rise within the mental health nursing workforce to satisfy this demand2. Increasing the number of individuals selecting to enter the career, in addition to retaining experienced mental health nurses, is a priority of the NHS England Long Term Workforce Plan3.
In its latest update on Nuffield Trust nurse education4 called for motion to challenge persistent and negative perceptions of the career with a purpose to encourage greater interest on this area of nursing. One in seven students who start a mental health nurse pre-registration course is not going to work as a mental health nurse4 and although the variety of mental health nurses has increased, the unoccupied rate stays high, starting from 12 to twenty% 2. Greater than ever, there’s a necessity to offer high-quality, specialist pre-registration education for mental health nurses. Concern amongst mental health nurses concerning the dilution of the curriculum consequently of the shift to genericism5,6,7 led to a large and significant debate on social media (#MHDeservesBetter). Mental health nursing workforce is ‘underutilized, versatile and beneficial’8 there’s good reason to have fun and promote the specialist knowledge, skills and experiences of a mental health nurse. They make unique and significant contributions to the life and well-being of our communities.
This week’s blog was written by deputy editor Jane Wray (J.Wray@hull.ac.uk)
Bibliography
- International Council of Nurses. (2022) Global mental health nursing workforce: It is time to prioritize mental health and well-being [Online]. Available from: icn.ch/sites/default/files/inline-files/ICN_Mental_Health_Workforce_report_EN_web.pdf[Accessed 23 February 2024].
- Health Education England (2022) Engagement and development: advancing mental health nursing now and in the longer term Engagement and development: advancing mental health nursing now and in the longer term (hee.nhs.uk)
- NHS England. (2023). The NHS Long Term Employment Plan NHS Long Term Employment Plan (england.nhs.uk)
- Palmer W, Dodsworth E, Rolewicz L (2023) Research report. In train? Progress within the education of mental health nurses. Nuffield Foundation In train? Advances in Mental Health Nurse Education (nhsconfed.org).
- Warrender, D, Connell C, Jones E, Monteux S, Colwell L, Laker C, Cromar-Hayes M (2023) Mental health deserves higher: Tackling the weakening of specialist pre-registration education for mental health nurses within the UK. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 22(1) pp. 202-212 https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.13236
- Connell, C., Jones, E., Haslam, M., Firestone, J., Pope, G. and Thompson, C. (2022) The mental health nurse identity: a critical evaluation of UK Nursing and Midwifery Council pre-registration change curriculum and the next move towards genericity. Mental Health Review Journal, (4), 472–483. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1108/MHRJ-02-2022-0012
- McKeown, M.(2023) Defying generalizations: towards a renewal of mental health nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, , 3189–3191. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.15598
- Hurley, J., Lakeman, R., Linsley, P., Ramsay, M. and Mckenna-Lawson, S. (2022) Leveraging the mental health nurse workforce: a review of the range of clinical roles and identities of mental health nurses. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, , 796–822. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12983
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