Research has shown that integrating mental wellness into medical care can significantly improve patient outcomes, as it addresses both physical and emotional well-being.
Yet, the reality of healthcare facilities today is that mental wellness and care are lacking in American hospitals indicated by proposals for greater integration. More profound is research on practicing registered nurses, especially those working in critical care or emergency departments (ED), expressing that they feel largely ill-equipped or unprepared when attempting to meet the demands of patients with mental illnesses or difficulties, with a particularly common complaint being a call for greater training in the area.
Advanced degree courses such as the Rockhurst University online MSN-PMHNP program, which prepares nurses to provide compassionate, evidence-based care for patients with specialized mental health needs, will play an important role in facilitating the building of greater knowledge and confidence in meeting these challenges. Of course, there are many pathways and courses you, as a nursing professional, might choose to upskill in this area, but an advanced degree will definitely be the most secure and consolidative way to refine practice and ensure the best patient care outcomes with a priority of mental wellness.
Advanced Degrees – What Are They? What Do They Mean for Nurses?
An advanced degree simply refers to any degree beyond the undergraduate or bachelor’s levels, which requires specific, specialized areas of study. They can include a master’s degree or a doctorate, the two most common types of advanced degrees. Often, these types of courses are intended for returning professionals who want to either pursue different pathways or make a footing in the academic field.
In the case of healthcare and nursing, advanced degrees can be instrumental to delivering better, higher-quality patient care, as well as being better prepared to anticipate and address challenges, including mental wellness and health. Moreover, nurses who have advanced degrees and therefore engage in advanced practice are more sought after to participate in broader research-based clinical trials and various other forms of career opportunities. With issues as complex as patient mental wellness and behavioral health, pursuing advanced degrees can ensure you, as a nurse, can strengthen the skills and preparedness in effectively meeting these constantly increasing demands with confidence and adeptness.
Once you have elevated yourself to being an advanced nurse practitioner, you can also make an active mark on the field by entering the ranks of leadership, which includes crucial duties of raising and educating the next generation of the nursing force to ensure they are also to carry the flame of ethical practice, professional responsiveness, and delivering the best care to patients.
Patient Mental Wellness and Mental Health Nursing
The goal here is the interdisciplinary integration of nursing practices with mental health, to practice a form of, per the International Nursing Council, mental health nursing. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental health, wellness, and well-being as the capacity for one to cope with the stresses of life, to realize abilities, to learn and work well, and contribute to the community, which also includes impairing conditions such as mental disorders, psychosocial disabilities, and other mental states; subsequently, the American Nurses Association defines nursing as not just a practice but a combined art and science of the caring, protection, promotion and optimisation of human health and functioning, with the prevention of illness, injury, faclitation of healing and alleviation being the basis of a compassionate nurse.
The experience patients have in illness or injury is often traumatic and debilitating for them both in physical and mental terms. Mental health nursing can be particularly crucial for patients who are at risk or are currently experiencing behavioural problems such as substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, and so on due to illness/injury or other external factors. Besides just mere compassion and ethical practice, it also requires a very particular way of interpersonal relationship practice as therapeutic tools to promote better physical and psychosocial well-being in patients. As the saying goes, there is no health without mental health, and the exigence of an advanced practice that blends both mental health awareness and the science of care is rather obvious. For currently practicing nurses, pursuing an advanced degree therefore becomes the key to realizing a future of an advanced, integrated practice that ensures better patient outcomes across your healthcare institution and beyond.
Having an Advanced Degree and Developing Advanced Practice – Effectively Addressing Patient Mental Health
So, how does attaining an advanced degree help nurses become advanced practicing nurses and, therefore, effectively address the inevitable challenges posed by patient mental well-being?
Specializations and Expertise
Many advanced degrees allow greater specializations and expertise for current professionals, including fields such as psychiatric mental health. These domains allow professionals to have an opportunity to gain for more in-depth understanding of the various disorders, conditions, as well as treatment/therapy strategies for at-risk patients. This research-based learning model, therefore, encourages greater evidence-based practices, which can enable assessments and interventions with more precision and accuracy.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
The beauty of these specializations in advanced nursing degrees is that they are heavily interdisciplinary in terms of research involving people from various disciplinary communities (e.g., social workers, psychologists, etc.), and general external stakeholders.
With the prioritization of patient-centered care models, the advanced nursing practices that come out of such courses ensure comprehensive integrated primary care models, which integrate both care and mental wellness for patients. Interdisciplinary practice has already been established for its potential in bettering patient care and satisfaction, reducing costs, expediting delivery of patient information, and increasing perceived quality of care. It is indicative of its essential place in not only improving mental wellness by affecting evidence-based interventions and strategies, but also for the streamlining of clinical practice overall.
Leadership Advocacy
The credentials you develop from an advanced nursing degree are the ability to enter leadership roles. This, therefore, means entering a whole new world of policy advocacy for things such as mental health awareness, resource allocation towards prioritizing patient mental wellness, and actively enacting policy changes to ensure the challenges of patient mental health are being addressed. All of these contribute to better patient outcomes, which benefits healthcare goals as a whole.
