Interdisciplinary Mental Health Team (Nursing)

00:00 We use interdisciplinary health teams just as most medical and surgical floors use interdisciplinary health teams in order to be able to provide the best services that we can.

00:14 Well, in mental health, we also have an interdisciplinary mental health team.

00:18 And so that's a group of healthcare professionals.

00:21 And we come from various areas of expertise.

00:24 And we all work together to move the patient towards the patient's goals.

00:32 Not necessarily towards our goal, towards the patient's goal for recovery.

00:38 So who do you think would be the primary person on an interdisciplinary mental health team? It's the patient. The patient is the expert.

00:49 The expert on himself, or herself, themselves.

00:53 It's the nurse.

00:54 The nurse who's working with that patient.

00:58 It's also the nurse practitioner, who had may have a good background with the patient have worked with the patient, before hospitalization, and also during hospitalization.

01:10 A physician who's a psychiatrist.

01:13 A case manager, who from the time of admission, through discharge, and back to the community is going to be looking specifically at this patient, and what's best.

01:25 The social worker, who works with the case manager on discharge planning, from the moment of admission.

01:34 Discharge planning starts the moment of admission.

01:38 And I'm going to say that as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, working in a hospital, the work that I do with my colleagues who are therapists, our therapists, and social workers and body movement specialists, doctors, therapists, psychologists, each one of us are responsible for gathering the data in our small field, and sharing them with the others.

02:13 So we can plan, a really, really comprehensive plan of care.

02:19 And the level of respect that I have been able to garner, and to be part of in this teamwork and collaborative group is so uplifting and it is what makes me love Mental Health Nursing.

02:37 We get together, we all hammer out a really good treatment plan.

02:43 And when I'm saying we, that patient is in there.

02:46 The treatment plan includes the patient.

02:50 And we look at clinical pathways, so that we can figure out how to move the patient from their first admission when they are in crisis, to stabilization, to stabilization with skills to discharge back to the community, and with a link to resources.

03:14 It is often that it is our role as nurses to lead the planning meetings.

03:21 Why do you think that might be? Nurses spend the most amount of time with the patient.

03:29 Physicians come in, and they will see the patient during the team meeting, or a one to one.

03:35 The social worker will see the patient, maybe during a group that is held.

03:42 The art therapist will see the patient if the patient chooses to go into art therapy.

03:48 The nurse is there all the time, whether we're doing 8 hour shifts, 10 hour shifts, or 12 hour shifts, We see the change in the day.

03:57 Completing comprehensive data collection.

04:00 Well, we are all involved in that. Right? We are involving the patient, we are involving their family, and all the other people that I just mentioned who are in the collaboration, all of us.

04:14 This is what makes it comprehensive data collection.

04:18 And then when we have the data, we can develop, implement, and evaluate our plan of care.

04:25 How are we doing? Is this patient moving in the direction we think that the patient should move? We can assist or supervise mental health care workers as well.

04:37 So you might have patient care technicians or mental health care technicians on the unit with you.

04:44 We would assist them, we could supervise them, and in some of the hospitals, we even give education to them.

04:52 In some places like in my hospital, it is one of our mental health experts who gives me education by providing me with CPI or training on how to protect myself in an environment where the patient might become violent.

05:09 And so we are a connected group that work together for patient safety and patient wellness.

05:17 Our focus is always to maintain that safe and therapeutic environment.

05:24 We want to make sure that we facilitate health promotion.

05:28 How do we do this? We do this through teaching.

05:31 We do this through helping to monitor behaviors, affects, and moods.

05:37 And we want to maintain oversight.

05:39 Over when we restrain a patient, or when that patient has to be secluded.

05:45 And I will be talking about restraints and seclusion, both physical as well as chemical.

05:51 We want to be able to be coordinating care that is provided to the patient by the full treatment team.