A critical time for nursing and mental health
Apr
29
Written by:
Kim Ryan
Thursday, April 29, 2010 12:06 PM
The announcements made last week by the Rudd government around health ‘reform’ and mental health funding are just that – announcements mean nothing until
1. finances are allocated in the actual budget, and
2. changes have begun.
As such, I believe this is a critical time for nursing and mental health.
There are many in the mental health sector far from happy with what has been announced so far. The sector continues to lobby government around the need for deep structural and funding changes – required over years – to make a real difference. Not only is mental health not receiving what is needs, nurses don’t even seem to be considered in the equation, even though we are the largest part of the workforce and the backbone of the health system.
Announcement after announcement has identified the planning and development needs for the medical profession – $148 million to train doctors to become GPs, $145 million to train more medical specialists – where are the nursing announcements? Where is the funding for nursing education? Where is the funding for postgraduate programs to develop nursing specialties like mental health?
In some ways this has been poorly challenged by nurses – can you imagine the uproar from the medical profession if hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in nursing education and doctors were left out of the equation?! Is this propensity to just accept what happens to us part of the cultural aspect of being a nurse? Are nurses, at their core, just good people who get on with their work, put the client first and don’t really have the time or the inclination to challenge the status quo, or are we just too tired?
It’s time nurses put the profession first. If we want our patients to come first, we need our profession to be taken seriously. We need the government to understand that you can’t just create ‘beds’ and ‘services’ without developing the nursing workforce to staff them. We need them to understand that doctors are not the only health professional group that matters in the delivery of high quality health and mental health care. We need consumers to speak up on our behalf, but most of all, we need to stick up for ourselves and make a ruckus.
No health without mental health reform!!
No health reform without supporting nurses!!!
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2 comment(s) so far...
Re: A critical time for nursing and mental health
Hi Kim, well said! True change will not take place without a unified approach - obviously including nurses! As a nurse educator I can confidently say that mental health has been sorely overlooked in the past. But one of my main concerns at the moment is the under-utlisation of EN(meds). Despite their ever expanding role, QHealth has not embraced them in the workforce and continues to insist that they work beneath their role. Even though their curriculum has them educated at a much higher level. This makes many EN(meds) shy away from mental health as they feel that they don't 'get to do enough'. Anyway, I will be interested to hear the views of others. Thanks, Liz
By Elizabeth on
Thursday, June 09, 2011 12:21 PM
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Re: A critical time for nursing and mental health
It's good to find a forum for debate. Kim, I too have worked in the mental health arena and have a Grad Dip in Mental Health. I am passionate about the development of a truly informed mental health workforce, who are not only up to date but are free of all the old school stigma perpetuated from within our own ranks. Honestly sometimes I despair, the psychiatric registraar who refuses to admit a highly suicidal young person because they have taken illicit substances, the mental health service who sends a suicidal woman home with a nice big box of Diaz to "help her calm down" and of course there was the community team who did not enforce the community order when their client (highly psychotic) told them, less than politely that he didn't want his depot injection. The community mental health team left. Within 3 days the water police were pulling his 29 year old body out of a lake. We need to start from within if we're serious. Has anybody else experienced problems like this? Thanks, Janet.
By Janet on
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 6:56 PM
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