After 30 years in mental health nursing, what keeps you going?
Wow, that 30-year number makes me feel old. I've always tried to seek positions where I can influence service access and change attitudes surrounding people with mental health presentations. Unfortunately, our internal health system can be one of the worst offenders in how they speak about people with mental health presentations — and that's something I've never been able to accept.
What major shifts have you seen over the last 30 years in this field?
One thing that stands out is safety. Although I know safety is still not where it needs to be, I never quite realised early in my career how vulnerable we were in the community as mental health nurses. It isn't about the person with the mental health presentation — it's the many interdependencies: driving by yourself, fatigue, access to talk to a colleague promptly, and someone checking medication administration, to name but a few.
I was nursing in the community prior to the days of a mobile phone — and then in the early days of having a phone and not having service. Sitting on the side of the road reading a hard copy street directory in the middle of nowhere. Some of the challenges. The other major change I've seen is the ceasing of hospital-based nursing and the shift to university training. The productivity inquiry recently recommended the reconsideration of an undergraduate mental health nursing program — a new curriculum standard for a three-year direct-entry undergraduate degree in mental health nursing. It's a no-brainer really. Irrespective of where you are nursing, you will interact with people who have experienced or are experiencing a mental health presentation.
What do your current roles involve?
I've recently taken a complete shift in my career — from being in public service for all of my career to moving to the private sector and commissioning mental health services. The drawcard was St John of God Murdoch, where they are developing mental health services on their campus with a true system change model for private sector access for youth and adults. I'm also the consortium lead for the recently opened Headspace Cannington. It's great to be able to bring multiple agencies together to deliver comprehensive mental health, drug and alcohol, physical health, and work and study support for young people.
What is your role within the ACMHN?
I have been the ACMHN WA Branch Chair for four years and have been surrounded by a great diversity of committee members volunteering their time to deliver education and the mental health nursing voice into the Western Australia health sector. Just over a year ago I was nominated onto the ACMHN Board where I am one of the Vice Presidents, and am very privileged to be able to develop and drive the strategic plan for mental health nurses across the nation.
What common misconceptions about mental health nursing would you like to bust?
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked if I was analysing them, I may be wealthy enough to not be working. I think we are just having a conversation. A great misconception is that if you can't see a task or busyness happening — like a mental health nurse sitting and talking to someone — then you aren't productive. The mental health nurse has an amazing skillset in building a therapeutic relationship, at times with rapidness in an acute setting, making informed decisions about risk and safety, using knowledge and skills for interventions in line with a person as a whole — mental and physical — and playing a pivotal role in their recovery. The diversity of mental health nursing is enormous — from enrolled nurses to registered nurses to nurse practitioners, and from child and adolescent to adult to older adult, across community, inpatient, and emergency settings.