Meeting patients' mental health needs

Our national Chief Nursing Officer (CNO), Ruth May, visited several teams in my Trust this week. She left us with some key messages, one of them being an urgent need for registered nurses to further develop their skills for caring for patients with mental health needs. This was across all specialties—emergency care, care of adults, children, and midwifery care. My colleagues shared their concerns relating to their patients' safety as well as their own personal safety.

The impact on patients of this knowledge gap has been examined for several years. Muir (2017) was a case reviewer for the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) report Treat as One: Bridging the gap between mental and physical healthcare in general hospitals (Cross et al, 2017). This report acknowledged that the acute care pathway is an important part of healthcare experienced by people with mental health conditions. However, it confirmed the long-standing concerns about the disparity between the treatment of mental and physical health conditions, and the undue emphasis, in healthcare, on physical health. When patients with a mental health disorder are admitted to acute general hospitals, their mental health problems are often overlooked, misunderstood or neglected.