Vacancies For Mental Health Nurses Can Be A Challenge To Fill
Mental health professionals are special types of people that have a great deal of patience, understanding and abilities to cope with stress. Meeting the needs of mental health patients is extremely demanding and often case loads are high with so many vacancies for mental health nurses. These vacancies can be a challenge to fill.
Staff nurses and registered nurses for mental health professions wear many hats while on the job. For example, they are responsible for making sure that hospital patients take all of their medications. Many times patients do not want to do this. It requires a great deal of patience and understanding to handle a shift where you have uncooperative patients.
These nurses are also responsible for coordinating patient schedules with the psychologist and psychiatrist schedules. At first glance this might seem like an easy enough tasks to complete. However, patients that are changing medications have to have visits at certain times and other patients have to be fit in the schedule in times of crisis. Patients cannot just simply go to the ER and get a few stitches when it comes to mental health issues. Coordinating and prioritizing schedules can be extremely stressful and frustrating.
Unlike other areas of nursing, the mental health profession can be very depressing and challenging. Nurses that have empathy and compassion can find it difficult to leave work at work. They can begin to feel hopeless or sad that they cannot do more to make a difference or to assist with the patient's treatment care plan. Many nurses suffer high burn out rates from worrying about and stressing about patients.
There is also higher burn out rates from nurses having to deal with the loss of patients due to suicide, accidents from substance abuse or death from substance abuse. Even though nurses are taught and trained not to blame themselves, there are times that as individuals nursing professionals will question if they did everything that they could to help specific patients. During the treatment process many nurses become attached to patients and feel a significant loss when the patient dies tragically and suddenly. Many people in society are uncomfortable with others that have a mental health issue. Often mental health related problems are swept under the carpet and not openly discussed. It is only natural that when making choices for medical facilities to practice nursing that many qualified and excellent nurses will purposely avoid the idea of working with mental health patients. They are afraid of the unknown or have pre-conceived notions that make them leery of even attempting a position in mental health. With the personal stress and the job stress it is not a surprise that there are so many vacancies for mental health nurses. There is a great deal of burn out and a high turn over rate to accompany the lower rate of applications in this area of nursing. With so many over-all vacancies for nurses and candidates have their pick of virtually any job that they want; there are many that will not even apply to mental health facilities and doctor offices. As mental health issues are becoming more accepted by society there will hopefully be an increase in the number of mental health nurses.
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