Mental health nursing is a specialised area of nursing that focuses on the care of people with mental health challenges. Nurses who work within the mental health care framework operate from a strengths-based approach to assist people in their recovery to emotional health and physical wellbeing. In this unit, you will learn about your nursing role in mental health care and recovery. You will develop your skills in establishing a therapeutic relationship in the clinical setting. You will apply the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) Registered nurse standards for practice (2016). You will continue to explore the importance of the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards (2017) to all nursing practice in Australia and use the Patient Safety Competency Framework (PSCF) (Levett-Jones et al., 2017) in your practice as a nursing student. You will be expected to identify risk and recognise and respond appropriately in the simulated and clinical environment. You will work within your scope of practice using the decision-making framework (DMF) (NMBA, 2020). You will participate in a compulsory two (2) day residential school prior to attending professional experience placement for this unit. This unit includes a 80 hour block professional experience placement in a mental health care setting. You must meet specific mandatory health, safety and security requirements to be eligible to attend each professional experience placement. Professional experience placements may be limited in your community and you may be placed in other locations. Please be prepared financially and personally to cover the costs to relocate for placements. Due to the limited availability of placements, some block placements have to start and/or end on dates that fall outside standard term dates.

Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.

Feedback from SUTE

At the Res School watching the interview for the MSE written assignment was very helpful to see how the professionals deal with mental health consumers and more of this would be very beneficial. This is a very important aspect of nursing and I believe the mental health placement should really be longer than 2 weeks, maybe like 4-5 weeks ideally. Mental health it seems is only going to become a bigger problem so the more educated we students can be in regards to this, the better. Great unit, loved my mental health placement and theory and the unit coordinators are a wealth of knowledge.

Unit Coordinators will continue to enhance the evidence-informed content and learning activities pertaining to the Mental State Examination (MSE) assessment within the 2-Day Residential School. Unit Coordinators will request the Bachelor of Nursing Head of Course (BN-HOC) and Deputy Dean Teaching and Learning (DDLT) to consider increasing the 2-Day Residential School to 3-Days and increasing the duration of the mental health nursing clinical placements from 80 hours to 160 hours.

Feedback from SUTE

The coordinators for this unit are by far my favourite that I have come across so far. Steve Haines, Craig Morris and Shunil Raina are absolutely wonderful, they are understanding and understanding of life's difficulties making them amazing teachers and mentors. They are the most approachable, understanding and caring teachers, they have made my mental health unit enjoyable and exciting to learn. A few coordinators from other units need to take notes from these guys in order for a great CQU learning experience is met along with less stressful timelines. I think the res school needs to be a bit longer, but overall it's been my favourite subject so far. I loved it. The unit coordinators were INCREDIBLE.

Unit Coordinators will continue to apply evidence-informed diverse teaching, learning and assessment philosophies and methods that are person-centred/student-focused, culturally sensitive and thus enhance individual students’ motivation, commitment and ability to successfully meet the unit requirements and aligned learning outcomes.

Feedback from SUTE

This unit has enlightened me and assisted me in understanding Mental Health nursing better and has taught me how to deal effectively with mental health patients in an empathetic way. All teaching staff from MH subject have been very supportive and accommodating to situations I have been going through and with helping my learning. I felt very supported with my learning in this unit and the teachers were very respectful and helpful. I have nothing to fault. Res school was insightful and extremely motivating. I thoroughly enjoyed this unit. I found it incredibly interesting and have gained skills that can be used throughout my nursing career regardless of where I end up in the future. The unit is well thought out and the assignments are very useful in preparing us for real-world mental health nursing scenarios.

Unit Coordinators will continue to develop and ensure the Moodle content/site, the 2-Day Residential School, and unit assessments are underpinned by current evidence-informed educationalist and mental health nursing knowledge and practice skills. Unit Coordinators will develop additional Moodle content such as weekly quizzes to enhance students' comprehension of mental health nursing knowledge and practice skills. This will assist students in completing the unit assessments and attaining the unit learning outcomes, and thus reduce the theory-to-practice void that exists within all mental health nursing and all other nursing disciplines.

Feedback from SUTE

Amazing unit and lecturer's, we need more mental health classes if anything. Incredible teachers. This placement unit was one of my favourites yet. The res school allowed me to be myself and express ourselves the way we wanted. I have always been more for being relaxed being yourself. communication plays a huge roll in nursing and this unit allowed us to actually put that therapeutic nursing side into action where clinical placements do not allow that. Our coordinator Craig Morris was very helpful and approachable. Very quick to respond to any queries. He is very knowledgeable in his field. Craig is an amazing teacher. Thank you, Craig. Cannot speak highly enough of Shunil his knowledge & experience that he shared was so valuable to my learning. He was very passionate about the MH field, extremely approachable, supportive & encouraging. I have learnt so much from Shunil & feel this has influenced my interest in furthering my career towards MH nursing.

Unit Coordinators will continue to apply diverse teaching, learning and assessment philosophies and methods that are aligned with Pedagogy, Andragogy, Bloom's taxonomy framework, Benner's concept relating to stages of clinical competence and principles of equality, diversity and inclusion. Unit Coordinators will continue to underpin their educationalist practice with recognised educational and mental health nursing theories and practice skills; Australian College of Mental Health Nursing (ACMHN) Standards of Practice and Scope of Practice; NMBA Standards and Codes; ICN Code of Ethics and importantly the CQUniversity Values (Engagement, Can do, Openness, Leadership, Inclusiveness).