What are the core competencies of a mental health nurse? A concept mapping study involving five stakeholder groups.
Nompilo Moyo, Martin Jones, Richard Gray
PMID 35411621WHAT IT FOUND
Service users and professionals described core mental health nursing competencies.
Risk assessment, recovery principles, person- and family-centred care and communication were most valued, but service users ranked risk lower than other groups did.
Key findings
01The concept map grouped mental health nursing competencies into clusters, with assessment and management of risk, understanding recovery principles, person- and family-centred care, and good communication skills ranked highest overall.
02Service users ranked assessment and management of risk less important, while the other stakeholder groups ranked it most important.
03Person- and family-centred care was highly ranked by service users, nurse academics and psychiatrists, but lower by mental health nurses and nurse managers.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Participants were recruited through social media and snowballing, so people who do not use these channels may be missing. The study did not aim to represent all service users or professionals, so the clusters cannot be generalised beyond these participants. Participants needed basic computer skills and used online software, which may have excluded people without those skills. Nurses' specialist mental health training was not verified, and carers and other mental health professionals were not included. Researchers, not participants, chose the final cluster solution, so the map may reflect the team's judgement.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this concept map as evidence that mental health nursing improves patient outcomes. The paper states there is no evidence from clinical trials or high-quality observational studies that mental health nursing care improves service user clinical outcomes compared with no specialist psychiatric nursing care.