Introduction
The first part of the Nursing Social Contract (NSC) represents a set of job-related expectations to maintain society’s trust in nursing. Motivation to confront challenges in the healthcare profession as part of career development must be present in Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioners (PMHNPs) to fulfill their full potential. Notably, the nurse’s lack of self-reflection might be an issue affecting success in these areas. This is because an exercise in careful introspection contributes to professionals’ comprehension of the need to continue their studies. By reviewing the relevant NSC elements and detailing my plans and intentions, this paper addresses how furthering my education as a PMHNP enhances practice and career planning.
Elements of NSC as Foundational Elements of My Practice
The first element of the NSC, ethical practice, including observing confidentiality, is foundational to my practice as an aspiring PMHNP as it ensures the absence of unfavorable social consequences and novel stress-induced risks for patients. As a future PMHNP now working in mental health under supervision, I am aware that failures to observe the ethical standards of patient privacy undermine the clientele’s trust in healthcare. Such failures also create barriers to patients’ optimal job performance and personal well-being. Psychiatric diagnoses, especially those linked to aggression, past traumas, sexual violence, and hallucinations, can be stigmatized, causing rumors, prejudice, and explicit discrimination against ailing individuals, thus exacerbating their stress (Shen et al., 2019).
Therefore, my efforts to keep patients’ personal/clinical data, which often includes rather intimate revelations, confidential from other professionals unauthorized to review it and the patient’s family/acquaintances are central to promoting patients’ general well-being. Overall, workplace activities and patient communication guided by best practices in protecting privacy underpin my professional endeavors and have implications for broader health.
Aside from protecting the psychiatric patient against stigmatization, the considerations of ethics are foundational to my professional practice since trust promoted by ethical excellence stimulates more active help-seeking behaviors. A systematic review by Planey et al. (2019) posits that the fear of unintended information disclosure constitutes a prominent barrier to seeking mental health services, especially among minority youth. Additionally, Shen et al. (2019) reveal that such fears fuel the desire to conceal certain information relevant to diagnosis and treatment from providers. In view of the presented evidence, staying committed to promoting patients’ total confidence that their privacy is central to my activities supports me in minimizing the fear of sharing any concerns that affect patients’ life. Help-seeking maximized by such an approach contributes to the clinical picture’s completeness, which has direct implications for public health.
Hazardous Service
Apart from ethical excellence, my practice as a mental health nurse striving for more autonomy and becoming a PMHNP necessitates accepting the hazardous service requirement. The latter is foundational to my currently supervised practice due to protecting society and eliminating patients’ barriers to service based on disease-induced violence. Nurse psychoeducation and ongoing professional development enable psychiatric care providers to develop sufficient skills to recognize and curb aggression, thus keeping aggressive clients in the healthcare system (Arafa et al., 2021).
In this manner, my clinical encounters as a nurse that can implement de-escalation but has no prescriptive authority yet assists society in making sure that the potential perpetrators with manageable psychiatric needs keep receiving services. Referring aggressive patients to non-psychiatric healthcare or public employees unqualified for managing aggression would basically create additional risks for society. As a nurse preparing to become a PMHNP, I accept these hazards and manage them using de-escalation skills, thus making a positive change by ensuring that individuals with risk-prone behaviors receive assistance.
Career Planning and Making a Difference by Confronting Professional Challenges
Regarding my career planning, I am willing to work in an inpatient psychiatric facility after becoming a PMHNP and offer psychotherapy treatments for a variety of conditions. Aside from patient-related matters, I am planning to make a difference in my profession by confronting the issue of psychiatric nurses’ well-being and supporting change locally. Current research suggests that over 95% of psychiatric nurses meet criterion A for PTSD, which refers to exposure to traumatic situations (Schuster & Dwyer, 2020).
To promote PTSD prevention among the nursing staff, I plan to collaborate with the practice setting’s management to advocate for new patient aggression management programs, thus assisting nurses in building resilience and self-care. I could also propose and popularize other realistic interventions, such as lifestyle education or innovative recharge rooms, to help nurses relieve stress between shifts. By implementing such efforts systematically and promoting novel well-being-oriented interventions, I plan to contribute to efforts aimed at addressing psychiatric nurses’ well-being, thus exploring what could be done to prevent nursing shortages.
Conclusion
To sum up, the discussed NSC elements and career plans reveal how the focus on social change permeates my current and potential activities in the psychiatric/mental health field. I accept the profession’s hazardous nature and deeply rely on professional ethics to protect patients and stimulate more trust in therapeutic relationships. I also seek to promote nurse well-being in the future. In the bigger picture context, these priorities indicate my psychological fitness for the profession and a holistic approach to the care process in which both patients’ and nurses’ well-being matters.
References
Arafa, A. E. M. H., Elmalky, M. I., & Elattar, N. F. (2021). Psycho-educational program for psychiatric nurses to protect themselves and others from the incidence of acute psychiatric inpatients aggression. Journal of Nursing Science Benha University, 2(2), 671-688. Web.
Planey, A. M., Smith, S. M., Moore, S., & Walker, T. D. (2019). Barriers and facilitators to mental health help-seeking among African American youth and their families: A systematic review study. Children and Youth Services Review, 101, 190-200. Web.
Schuster, M., & Dwyer, P. A. (2020). Post-traumatic stress disorder in nurses: An integrative review. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 29(15-16), 2769-2787. Web.
Shen, N., Sequeira, L., Silver, M. P., Carter-Langford, A., Strauss, J., & Wiljer, D. (2019). Patient privacy perspectives on health information exchange in a mental health context: Qualitative study. JMIR Mental Health, 6(11), 1-17. Web.