The closing date has been extended to - Friday 16th December 2011.

We are seeking expressions of interest from mental health nurses who wish to further their professional and career goals by undertaking an innovative work experience program under the guidance of an experienced mentor.

Any mental health nurse who believes they or their service may benefit from the experience is welcome to apply.

If you know any mental health nurses who may benefit from this exciting initiative, please encourage them to apply before this final closing date.

Priority will be given to mental health nurses with less than 2 years experience who currently work in public mental health services in rural or remote locations in NSW.

The program offers for up to 20 successful applicants the opportunity to:

• Work with a mentor in an LHD other than their own for up to 5 consecutive days to pursue employment and career goals, e.g. within an inpatient mental health unit, a community-based service, Specialist Mental Health Services for Older People or an Emergency Department
• Have their air/rail transport, accommodation, meals and local travel expenses paid
• Have their position back-filled up to a total of $1500 (paid directly to the employing LHD) (The hosting LHD will also receive a small contribution to assist with the mentoring costs).

The program was developed in recognition of Mr Bob Fenwick’s long service to mental health nursing and the important role he played in mentoring less-experienced mental health nurses. Mr Fenwick was tragically killed in a work-related incident at Bloomfield Hospital, Orange NSW, in January 2011.

The application information can be downloaded from the NSW Nurses Association website or via this link.

The Mentee Information Booklet and the Mentee Expression of Interest Form can also be accessed via the following links:

Mentee Information Booklet 2011 (166kb)
Mentee Expression of Interest Form 2011 (263kb)

If you require more information or need assistance with the Expression of Interest form, please don’t hesitate to contact the Program Manager Marc Hopkins or Mary McLeod on: Metro: (02) 8595 1234; Rural: 1300 367 962, or via email mhmgrant@nswnurses.asn.au

Image credit: NSWNA

Bob Fenwick was a mental health nurse tragically killed in a work-related incident at Bloomfield Hospital, Orange NSW, in January 2011.

The Bob Fenwick Memorial Mentoring Grants Program 2011/12 has been developed to recognise Bob’s long service to mental health nursing and the important role he played in mentoring less-experienced mental health nurses.

Have you checked to see if you’re eligible?

The program aims to encourage experienced mental health nurses to mentor less experienced colleagues, for the betterment of mental health in NSW.  Funding for the grants is provided by NSW Health and administered by the New South Wales Nurses’ Association.

Who can apply?

Applicants for the grants must be currently registered nurses working in a public mental health service in NSW. Mental health nurses with less than 2 years experience working in rural or remote services will be given priority
.

Applicants must:

• have in-principle agreement from their organisation to participate
• be able to complete the mentorship
• experience in early 2012
• develop a plan identifying the mental health experiences sought through the placement
• articulate their objectives in undertaking the mentorship and how these relate to current employment and career goals.

How are grants awarded?

Up to 20 grants will be awarded. Priority will be given to applicants with less than two years experience, who work in rural or remote public mental health services in NSW.

The Program Steering Committee will determine the successful grant applications.
Successful applicants will be personally notified and awards announced in January 2012.

For more information download the information booklet and expression of interest from the NSWNA website www.nswnurses.asn.au.

Will you apply for a grant?

Image credit: NSWNA

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A campaign of bed closures has delivered a major breakthrough for safer staffing levels in the Coffs Harbour Mental Health Services.

During a hearing in the NSW Industrial Commission, management guaranteed to roster eight nurses on morning and afternoon shifts and four on the night shift at the 30-bed acute mental health unit.

Sue Kendall, President of NSWNA Coffs harbour Mental Health Branch and Jack Schwartz, Vice President

In return the NSW Nurses’ Association mental health branch reopened six beds it shut during the campaign of bed closures.

The 8:8:4 roster was a key demand of the branch, which had been battling for more staff for at least two years. Previously the unit had seven nurses on mornings and afternoons and four at night.

NSWNA General Secretary, Brett Holmes, said management of the Mid North Coast
Local Health District also agreed to fast-track the implementation of nurse-to-patient ratios according to the Nursing Hours Per Patient Day (NHPPD) model.

The NSWNA secured these ratios for most NSW hospitals following a public campaign in 2010. They are due to come into effect in June next year.

Brett said the Coffs Harbour nurses correctly decided they could not safely continue their high levels of overtime and double shifts.

‘They were burning out and many were considering leaving, which would have made the vacancy situation worse,’ he said. ‘The safest thing to do, for all concerned, was to take this action (bed closures) while recruitment efforts were beefed up.

President of the union’s mental health branch at Coffs Harbour, Sue Kendall, said the branch voted unanimously to close beds after more than two years of fruitless negotiations.

Sue said nurses were concerned about working in an environment that was unsafe for both patients and staff. The branch had raised the issue at the Reasonable Workloads Committee as far back as November 2009.

She said two high dependency beds and four acute/sub acute beds were closed in the 30-bed unit. This meant only those beds that could be safely staffed remained open, after existing patients were discharged.

‘It wasn’t difficult to get nurses to agree (to close beds) because they have had to work in an unsafe environment under great stress for so long. Nurses were worried about what might happen to a patient as a result of the pressure,’ Sue said.

She said management had agreed to re-establish an active Reasonable Workload
Committee, where nurse and management representatives would meet fortnightly, to discuss issues such as rosters, recruitment and the skill mix.

‘We need to follow up the 8:8:4 agreement and make sure recruitment happens as quickly as possible.’

Are there nurses at your workplace who are burning out and considering leaving? Will you take action as Coffs Harbour have done?

Image credit: NSWNA

Mental health was the big winner in this year’s Federal Budget, with a $1.5 billion boost to mental health services.

NSWNA Assistant General Secretary Judith Kiejda said: ‘After years of neglect, this is a serious commitment by the Gillard Government to mental health and the NSWNA believes these new initiatives announced in the Budget make up a lot of lost ground in addressing the crisis in Australia’s mental health services.’

A raft of new initiatives were announced, many with a focus on prevention and early intervention for children.

The Budget increases the number of Headspace mental health services for young people from 60 to 90. The Government will also invest $222.4 million to fund an extra 12 Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres to help the 11,000 young Australians at risk of mental illness each year.

$32 million was also announced for the establishment of a Mental Health Commission to independently monitor, assess and report on how the system is performing, providing greater account-ability and transparency to the sector.

To provide better co-ordinated care for those with a chronic mental illness the Government will spend $344 million setting up a single point of contact that will co-ordinate housing, health and social services.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said: ‘This is the largest Commonwealth commitment to mental health services in Australia’s history. Our mental health reforms will deliver better targeted, better co-ordinated and more comprehensive care for mental health patients and their families.’

While the ANF and NSWNA back the majority of the new initiatives in the mental health reform package, they call on the Government to enter into urgent discussions with the sector’s key stakeholders to identify ways to develop the workforce needed to provide the announced new services and programs.

What other changes would you like to see in the Mental Health sector?

Image credit: topnews.co.nz

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The Australian Psychological Society (APS), the largest professional association for psychologists in Australia, welcomes the Gillard Government’s new investments in mental health in the Federal Budget but is concerned that crucial funds are being redirected from the Better Access initiative, the most successful mental health program in the last 30 years.

A recent Government evaluation of the Better Access initiative showed how effective it is and determined that it was good value for money. But Professor Lyn Littlefield, Executive Director of the APS, said that Government plans to reduce the number of sessions of psychological treatment available will impact upon its effectiveness for the people who most need it. This will do nothing to improve mental health service delivery, only the Budget’s bottom line.

The evaluation of the Better Access initiative showed that increasing access to evidence-based psychological interventions reduced the impact of mental illness in a highly cost-effective way.

“This program is widely used by Australians with moderate to severe mental disorders, and reducing the number of sessions available for treatment will decrease the quality of overall service provision,” she said.

Increased investment in services to better support people with severe and persistent mental illness through improved coordination of social and clinical services is urgently needed and the Government’s moves in this area are very timely, she said. Additional funding for the Personal Helpers and Mentors Program and Family Mental Health Support services are also welcome due to the high demand for these programs.

The APS also supports the Government’s approach of tackling major gaps in the current mental health service system by expanding the Access to Allied Psychological Therapy Services (ATAPS) to increase access to psychological therapies for people living in rural areas, Indigenous people and those who live in lower socio-economic areas.

It welcomes the Government’s increased investment in children’s mental health service delivery, as this is an area that has long been ignored and enhances the Government’s other investments in early intervention through the headspace and early psychosis initiatives.

“Overall the Government has made significant and well-targeted investment in mental health that will benefit many Australians with mental illness, particularly those with severe mental illness. But the changes to the Better Access initiative are not warranted and threaten the effectiveness of a highly successful program with proven results in order to save a small amount of funding,” she said.

What do you think about the possible redirection of funds?

Image credit: psychologytoday.com

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There is a crisis in recruiting and retaining nurses in mental health. The average age of the average nurse is mid-40s, but the average age of mental health nurses is late 50s.

In part three of our series on mental health nursing we discuss the unique issues for rural mental health nurses.

As manager of in-patient services at Greater Southern area health Service, Julie Mooney, RN, faces challenges unique to mental health nurses working in rural or remote areas – particularly those working in areas beleaguered with problems of drought and/or flooding.

Julie’s community has seen a higher number of mental health presentations as well as suicides recently due to farmers’ livelihoods being decimated by the weather as well as government restrictions on water.

‘It has an accumulated effect on farmers – the effect of years and years of everything going wrong and having no control over it,’ says Julie, who has worked in mental health nursing for 30 years. ‘The farmers can’t control the weather so you can do everything right and then it doesn’t rain for six months or it rains 10 inches in an hour. Rural people have usually inherited the farm so they are the generation who are failing.’

Many female mental health nurses in rural areas are also farmers’ wives, like Julie.

‘This means you are feeling the angst yourself as a person who is part of the community, and then you have to go and work and experience the anguish of other people. It hits very deeply because you really understand what is going on.”

Another issue is one of confidentiality in a small community.  In small communities, everyone knows everyone else so you are often dealing with your friends and acquaintances and it can be difficult because of confidentiality issues, says Julie.

“If you are the mental health nurse people may feel uncomfortable coming to you because they know you personally.”

Staff shortages in rural areas are particularly chronic.

“We can’t even fill the shifts we have got. We are struggling on a day-to-day basis. Nurses aren’t coming into mental health and certainly not in rural areas. I hear students saying they are not encouraged to go into mental health. They are getting the idea at university that mental health nursing is not good.”

“We need to support new grads and increase staffing levels so we can fill our positions as they arrive. If you have understaffed teams everyone gets stressed and leaves, which makes it worse,” says Julie.

Despite the challenges, Julie loves her work. ‘It’s incredibly rewarding,’.

Do you work in mental health? Why did you choose to work in this area?

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What do you think would encourage recruitment and retention of staff?

There is a crisis in recruiting and retaining of nurses in mental health. The average age of the average nurse is mid-40s, but the average age of mental health nurses is late 50s.

Last week we highlighted why Tristan Chapman, a second-year RN working in the PECC unit at Nepean hospital in the Blue Mountains, chose to work in mental health.

This week, Andrea Simpson, a CNC, part of the Camperdown Mental Health Team at RPA since 2007, and currently working with the Early Intervention in Psychosis Service, explains why she chose the sector.

Andrea Simpson

“We do everything from counselling, care planning, helping with housing and accommodation needs, helping to navigate the Centrelink process with some young people, and collaborating with services such as juvenile justice and probation and parole.

“I work Monday to Friday in the community. Several days of the week we have case reviews and discuss treatment plans in a multidisciplinary team approach. We can do home visits or wherever clients are comfortable talking, such as school, a café, park or go to see someone who is in hospital. It’s very varied work,” says Andrea.

“Clients are all very different, so with any two people with similar symptoms, there could be multiple reasons why they have got to where they are. So you have to do detective work and work out what brought them to where they are to help them,” she says.

Andrea began her career in mental health in the UK in 1996 when she qualified as a ‘Registered Mental Nurse’ – a title she finds amusing to this day. ‘Yes, I love being a “mental nurse”,’ she laughs.

Previously having worked in childcare, Andrea wanted something ‘more challenging’ where she could continue to put her skills to good use in helping young people.

“Working with young people I see a very positive attitude with them in terms of their desire to get better. They want to work out what the problem is and get back to where they were before. You work with the young person to find out what their goals are and help them achieve these, rather than telling them what their goals should be. We take a recovery-focused attitude.”

Yet, despite the rewarding aspects of the job, there’s still a stigma surrounding mental health nursing, according to Andrea. Part of this is due to the perception that mental health nurses are constantly working with dangerous people and are at risk of being harmed. While this does occur on occasion, Andrea says the reality of mental health nursing is not as daunting as it is imagined.

“Mental health nursing is a speciality you can elect on completing general nursing training rather than a specific career in its own right. It’s only when students complete a placement with mental health during their training and see that mental health nursing isn’t this scary, strange thing they think it is that they choose to work in this field,” says Andrea.

It’s because of this stigma that recruitment to mental health nursing is a challenge. Additional administration work compounds the problems of staff shortages, particularly in the community teams.

“Hospitals need to employ staff to do the admin work as this would improve our lives immensely,” says Andrea.
Andrea would also like to see more opportunities for access to transition training in mental health for new graduates.

She says mental health nursing is ‘no walk in the park’, and particular qualities are required to do the job successfully. “You have to have a lot of resilience, be very self-aware and non-judgemental,” says Andrea.

“So you need to leave your baggage behind and be aware that what is going on with that person is not directed at you, so they’re not calling you that name because you are a horrible person it’s because of what’s going on in their life. You have to be aware of your own values and attitudes and leave them at home.”

Do you work in mental health? Why do you enjoy it?

Image credit: the LAMP

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The average age of the average nurse is mid-40s, but the average age of mental health nurses is late 50s. There is a real crisis in terms of recruitment and retention of nurses in this sector.

In this three-part-series we will discuss the benefits of nursing in mental health and what can be done to encourage recruitment and retention.

As part of its package of health reforms announced last year, the Federal Government announced $277 million for mental health to boost frontline services, prevention and early intervention.

Tristan Chapman, RN in Mental Health

But NSWNA Assistant General Secretary Judith Kiejda says this investment was just ‘a drop in the ocean’.

“Mental health is an area where you need a high nurse-to-patient ratio. Nurses need to have the time to sit down and talk to patients to build rapport and find out what their issues are and how nurses can help them,” says Judith.

“We now have nurse-to-patient ratios for inpatient mental health embedded in the public health sector award. This will help address the major problem of staffing in this area, and we will be working to achieve mandated staffing in community mental health next time,”she says.

Despite the challenges, mental health nurses love their work, finding it rewarding, varied and interesting.

Tristan Chapman, a second-year RN working in the PECC unit at Nepean hospital in the Blue Mountains, offers an insight into the realities of mental health nursing.

Teamwork is very important, yet staffing is a major problem, he says.

“We have major troubles staffing the unit at times. Keeping senior staff in mental nursing is a big one. Our main focus is keeping people out of hospital at all costs and to do that we need a strong community team. Unfortunately, we are most short of staff, especially senior staff.”

Tristan is studying for his Master’s Degree in mental health.

“My mum’s a mental health community nurse so she had an influence,” he says.

“I enjoy talking to people more than performing a lot of procedures and general nursing. You’re always meeting very different people from all sorts of backgrounds. Everyone’s story is different, which keeps the work very interesting.”

He says there is no ‘typical’ day in the PECC unit.

“We only have three staff, which is two RNs and an EN for a six-bedded unit. One of the RNs also does all the assessments and consultations to the Emergency Department.

“Depending what shift you are on, you could be running the unit, dealing with families, dispensing medications, as well as liaising with other teams. If you’re on assessments you could be seeing anywhere up to five or six people in a shift. We see at least 300 presentations a month.”

Tristan has been at Nepean for the past 18 months while he completes his final four subjects of his MA.

“I’m doing postgraduate studies because I’m interested in getting into a more educational role such as CNE. As CNE, I would be still working clinically on the unit but more with staff on providing better education and developing policies and procedures around the ward,” he says.

Do you work in mental health?

Why did you choose to work in this area?

What do you think would encourage recruitment and retention of staff?

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Determined action has won a stronger mechanism to enforce safe staffing in Community Health and Community Mental Health.

While the Government’s offer on nurse-to-patient ratios is an excellent achievement that will benefit the majority of public health sector nurses, the offer does not include maximum, mandated face to face client hours in the areas of community and community mental health.

 The NSWNA has fought hard over the past few weeks and has achieved significant improvements for these important nursing areas.

 NSWNA General Secretary Brett Holmes said, “As a result of our determined negotiations and rallies by members across the state, the NSWNA has achieved a gain by improving the wording in the workloads clause to make this a much better mechanism for the enforcement of reasonable staffing.

“Our experience in closing beds and services was an important part of the campaign. We now know we have a better tool to enforce safe staffing into the future, irrespective of whether we have ratios in a certain specialty or not.”

The NSWNA will also look at all other avenues before the next Award campaign to improve staffing including through the role of the Federal Government in these areas.

“It’s very disappointing the Government refused our claim in community and community mental health. But no where else in the world has anyone won ratios in these areas, including Victoria and California,

“Even without maximum face to face hours there is now plenty of scope to control workloads. For nurses on the ground we need to be firm in our position that if there is no money for extra staff there shouldn’t be any extra services.”

Lilian Booth, an RN at Orange Community Health agrees.

“In Community Health there are always things that you can not do and by not doing them you get through to your manager that you haven’t got enough staff. Not everything we do is urgent.”

Lilian says it is disappointing that Community Health and Community Mental Health didn’t get maximum, face to face client hours but it is still a good stepping stone.

“I’ve been working in nursing for 40 years so I would have been surprised if they caved in and gave us everything at once. It’s a start and a huge improvement. Any mandated staffing level is better than what we’ve got.”

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JK Rowling, on the outside, seems to have it all.

She is the author of the Harry Potter series – the worldwide phenomenon credited for getting children, adults, grandparents, reading again.
She is the first self made billionaire author in history. She is richer than the Queen. She has a beautiful family and loving husband who she describes as ‘the love of her life’.

But in a recent interview on the Oprah Winfrey show she describes how her life has been shaped by pain, loss, and suffering.
She admitted had been tortured with depression, so bad, that it drove her to the brink of suicide.

JK Rowling, (Jo) started writing the first book Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone about six months before her mother died, but she never told her about it. During the interview, Jo says it’s no coincidence that Harry’s own journey throughout the series is to deal with death in its many forms—what it means to die, what it does to those left behind and what it means to survive death.

“If she hadn’t died, I don’t think it’s too strong to say that there wouldn’t be Harry Potter,” Jo says.

“The books are what they are because she died…because I loved her and she died.”

After her mother’s death Jo entered into a dark depression whish sparked suicidal thoughts, she knew she needed help and went to her doctor and received counselling.

It was this struggle with depression that inspired the ‘Dementors’ – one of the darkest aspects of the Harry Potter books—dark creatures who feed off of human happiness and suck the soul out of people so they are left as an empty shell.

“It’s so difficult to describe to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness,” Jo says.

“I know sadness. Sadness is to cry and to feel. But it’s that cold absence of feeling—that really hollowed-out feeling. That’s what Dementors are,” she says on Oprah

Click here to watch the preview video of the interview on Oprah.

We think JK Rowling is a great role model to go public with her battles with depression and publicize the fact she sought help and received counselling – what do you think?

Are you, or your family a fan of the Harry Potter books? If so what do you/they love about them?

Image source: ward 87, Oprah.com.

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