Work Study Clinical Placement

Learning Goal: My primary goal is to establish an assessment tool that would help in the promotion of hand hygiene among the patients with mental disorder. It should be noted that the tool will be taken to the staff to establish its viability. Moreover, the assessment tool will be made available to the general staff so that they can help the patients in implementing handwashing among the mentally ill patients. Also, the recommendations from the registered nursing staff would be used among the healthcare providers to enhance compliance of hand hygiene within the health facility.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Theoretical Perspective:

The Environmental Theory designed by Florence Nightingale will provide me with the opportunity to understand the environment, which always affects the life of every organism. This theory will be instrumental in the mental health unit, and it will provide the necessary framework that would be used in promoting hand hygiene among mentally ill patients. According to this theory, the proper hygienic condition is believed to be vital in preventing diseases that often result from a dirty environment (Guskey, 2014). Moreover, the environmental theory holds that nurses need to balance their tasks with the environment to help the patients to take the recovery path. Also, the environmental theory would assist in the assessment, planning, and implementation of hand hygiene among patients in the unit. My goal is to focus on environmental hygiene and more specifically hand hygiene which will enable mentally sick people to adopt the concept of hand washing and hence keep them way from contracting diseases related to poor hygiene such as diarrhea.

It is instructive to note that the environmental theory creates an opportunity for the patients to be involved in the process of keeping proper hygiene, which significantly helps patients with a mental disorder. In light of this, Nightingale emphasized on improving the general sanitation of the environment such as clean water and proper drainage among others, which will enable the mentally ill people to maintain their hand hygiene (Anderson et al., 2014). Therefore, I will effectively utilize this theory in ensuring that the hand hygiene condition is promoted to prevent diseases that thrive in unhygienic conditions from affecting patients with a mental disorder.

CNO Competency:

Knowledge-Based Practice

Nurses are professional health care providers and can be differentiated with the rest of the practitioners due to the way they approach patients, their training, and their practice. Focusing on the main goal that is hand washing for the mental health problems, there are several competencies which are explored by nurses in the commitment to achieve this goal (Watt-Watson, Peter, Clark, Dewar, Hadjistavropoulos, Morley-Forster & Campbell-Yeo, 2013). The first competency that nurses will explore is in the category of knowledge-based practice. Thus, the use of knowledge learned from training and theories and the way they are relevant to mental illness. Registered nurse should provide mental health care through the knowledge acquired from school and relevant learning intuitions and put them into practice. Since nurses know about depression and the implications that mental illness such as pressure would cause in the life of a patient (Boscart, McCleary, Huson, Sheiban & Harvey, 2017). Registered nurse should provide other treatment rather than drugs only, for example, a registered nurse can conduct counseling for patients with mental health problems. Not only that but the general hygiene of the patients suffering mental illness and the population should be kept high based on the knowledge and their theoretical perception.

The next competency that registered nurse should have while providing mental health care is to apply the concept of population health for executing strategies that enhance health and prevention of diseases. These concepts include; promoting hand washing among people with depression- registered nurses should encourage washing hands among patients and the general population. Programs on creating awareness among people and the community would ensure people understand how hand washing can prevent diseases such as typhoid and diarrhea (Fox, Butler, Persaud, Tregunno, Sidani & McCague, 2016). Immunization is also a concept applied by registered nurses in the community to ensure the community gets proper vaccinations in regard to mental illness that boost their immunity. Again the concepts of safety sex among people, especially people with depression that are vulnerable to diseases like HIV/AIDs and other STIs. Programs should run within the community, teaching mentally challenged people on the use of a condom to prevent diseases. And finally, nurses should assist the community on the safety of the helmet and the effects during a severe accident.

On the same category of knowledge-based practice, registered nurse should explore the competency of providing patients of depression with assistance to understand the way lifestyle and social factors influence their health. Such factors would include; physical exercise, nurses should be competent enough to inform mentally challenged population about the positive effects of physical activities and the way this would lead to their physical fitness (Moga & Cabaniss, 2014). In the process of providing health care to the mental illness, nurses should also have competent to demonstrate to the patients the importance of sleeping in human life and the adverse effects of failing to have adequate time to sleep. At the same time, health care providers should inform patients on the management of stress because stress can cause depression and further mental health problems that might also lead to pressure and would harm the patient (Watt-Watson et al., 2013). Again nurses should explore competency to teach clients on individual and community hygiene through community programs involving mentally challenged group to create awareness on hygiene. Finally, registered nurses should have competent to guide patients with mental health problems on the use of safety family planning and the moral health behaviors within the society.

Service to the Public

Based on the public perception on the health care and the roles of health providers to the people, registered nurses should ensure the use of health care knowledge to enhance the health of mentally challenged people at national and international level. At the national level, they should collaborate with the government to get the required health facilities and also cooperate with the government to carry out national programs on how to improve the health status of the citizens suffering from mental illness (Boscart et al., 2017). Again the registered nurses should explore opportunities and work with the international health organizations to ensure proper treatment for depression globally. Nurses in their pursuit of providing health care should provide services within their territorial levels, for example, providing health care within a given boundary. As well as providing health care services within a region and carrying health programs to the people in a particular region. On the other hand, a registered nurse should collaborate with the health agencies like the government health ministry to deliver services to mentally challenged population. Finally, the point of care, such as the clinics established within the community to give health care services to patients of mental illness.

The other competency based on service to the public is that the registered nurse should collaborate with other practitioners for proactive reaction to fluctuations in the health care structure. This can be through identifying and analyzing variations that influence the practice of health care providers and patients. Nurses should be competent in analyzing the factors that would negatively affect their services to the people and how the best care practice can be realized at all times of their service delivery (Watt-Watson et al., 2013). Again the registered nurses should come up with tactics to manage the change that influence patient care and mental health care services. Nurses should as well be competent to execute such changes at the right time, especially when proper health care is needed to the people. In this category, the registered nurse should as well have competency for proper evaluation of the efficiency of the tactics employed in the execution to the variations in the nursing practices and service delivery to the mentally challenged group (Sherwood & Barnsteiner, 2017). Competency for proper evaluation of nursing practices would lead to better health care services to mental illness in the community. It is worth noting that, it is better health care that leads to healthy people even at work and hence an improvement of the economy.

Ultimately, the registered nurse should indicate perpetual competence and readiness to reach the regulatory needs through imitating on peoples' practice and personal competence to show the learning requirements. It is through colleagues and their learning that the registered nurses can gain more experiences and put them into practice for better mental health care provision to the patients. Again registered nurse can come up with a learning plan by using many sources such as self- evaluation approach and peer feedback. Developing a self-evaluation methodology can give nurses a practical result of their practice on service delivery to the patients (Fox et al., 2016). Self-evaluation integrated with peer feedback is a great strategy to show how the registered nurses improve the health care services and their effort towards a healthy population. The registered nurse should be competent enough to seek and explore new knowledge to promote, assist, or affect proficiency in practice. Nurses should also show their readiness by executing and evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of their learning plan to promote and maintain their competence as a professional registered nurse. It is imperative to note that nursing is fundamental in the life of human being, and so it is advisable to have adequate competency as a nurse especially when offering mental health care to ensure proper health care to the population.

Course/Program Outcomes:

List the number of course/program outcomes for each of the four objectives within the learning plan. See course syllabus and select the course/program outcome(s) that are directly related to your learning objectives.

Objectives Resources & Timelines Indicators of Achievement

Objective 1 - Assessment

Nurses often play the critical role of spearheading activities that are aimed at improving hygiene among the people. My learning plan revolves on promoting the handwashing program among the people so that diseases that result from dirty hands can be reduced. My objective will be to assess the significance of my learning goal in the general applicability in the medical field. The primary focus will be to monitor different hand hygiene through observation and to craft different methods that can be used to prevent various infections that are associated with poor hygiene (Guskey, 2014). My primary goal in assessment objective is to establish and develop precise methods that will be used by my clients in promoting the hand washing, given the importance of keeping proper hygiene. I will emphasize that the procedures are correctly followed to ensure that the learning goal is achieved. Given my pursuance of success in every undertaking, I will be resilient in ensuring that every individual implements the handwashing program as per the set guidelines.

Identify a minimum of TWO specific resources and...