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Challenges Faced By Nurses Providing Psychiatric Care
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Thesis:
Nursing is one of the most demanding profession, and nurses often encounter challenges ranging from the increased number of patients, scarcity of resources, changes in the environment, public bias and cultural diversity which may inhibit their performance and ability to deliver quality care.
Introduction
Caring for patients with mental health issues is a major global challenge for the nurses. In most countries especially the developing nations, research concentrates on the experience of nurses in health care system without focusing on the psychiatric unit. The paper will focus on the problem of an increased population of psychiatrists’ patients against unlimited services, environmental challenge influence of work environment on delivery care, issue of diversity, limited resources in the hospitals to take care of complex mental treatments and public bias. Also, in the acute areas, nurses’ face fails to deliver quality services due to psycho-social and psychological challenges.
Literature Review
Currently, the population of patients in need of psychiatric care has drastically increased above the available nursing services. A nurse finds it difficult to deliver quality services due to the high number of patients they handle concurrently. According to Appold (2016), nurses taking care of mentally ill persons in the USA are inadequately trained hence affecting the provision of care.

In most cases, the patient fails to comply with the medication, laboratory works and general medical care which make it hard for the limited nurses to provide proper care.
Influence of work environment is a major challenge facing psychiatric nurses. In most psychiatric centers, there are undeveloped and under-resourced mental care systems which make it difficult for the nurses to provide adequate care. Research conducted by Marie, Hannigan & Jones (2017), shows that few studies are conducted to examine the health of nurses dealing with mental care. The hospitals fail to understand the challenges faced by nurses within the system to reduce the difficulties faced by the professions when providing care. Mental health systems need to be improved to lessen the work for the nurses and ensure quality health services for the patients.
According to research conducted by Marsella (2011), mental health professionals are faced with the challenges of working with an ethnoculturally diverse population. There are specific dimensions that professionals need to apply when providing services to culturally diverse patients. Professionals need to understand scope like social class, education, and gender before deciding on the service provision. Also, status and identities like migratory workers, skilled and unskilled international workers, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers like war victims and international students need to be understood and evaluated. Thus, nurses need to be equipped in an array of cultural issues to prevent ethnoculturally diverse patients which is a burden to the professional nurses.
In America, the mental health care system is not well developed a problem that affects the dissemination of psychiatric care. Sabella & Fay-Hillier (2013) conducted research identifying the challenges faced in mental care nursing. The finding revealed that psychiatric nurses are provided with limited resources and face bias from the public. The society fails to understand the complexity of their works hence shows prejudice and stereotypes which affect their provision of care.
Patients who have mental illness especially those in need of acute psychiatric care require quality care from the professionals. Research conducted in Western Cape Province on nurse’s experience in acute admission shows the difficulty of handling such patients. Nurses need to provide and show passion care and teamwork for the patients (Sobekwa & Arunachallam, 2015). In most cases, the nurses are not equipped with adequate support from the authorities to make their work successful.
The ability of nurses to provide quality services in the acute psychiatric wards is faced with the challenge of psycho-social and psychological issues. Seeing the suffering of the patients and listening to their problems are traumatizing to the care providers. In most cases, the physical and mental well-being of the nurses is affected (Zarea, Fereidooni, Baraz & Tahery, 2018). The authority needs to come up with special care for handling the health of the nurses who work with mentally ill patients to help them manage trauma and other psychological issues.
According to Hendrickson, Schmal, & Ekleberry (2014), there is a direct connection between the use of addictive drugs and substance abuse and mental illness. The trio further reports that patients with mental health disorders consume approximately 40 percent of cigarettes, 44 percent of cocaine, and 38 percent of alcohol which in return, affects their mental status. On the other hand, Smith (2018) claims that dealing with substance abuse, drug addiction, and alcoholism is not an easy task: it, however, becomes more difficult when the patient in question is also battling with mental health problems. In this paper, the effects of substance abuse and mental illness on the nursing profession and industry are discussed.
According to Adams (2015), nurses that battle with substance abuse are afraid to seek medical assistance because of fear of losing their job. Further research by Smith (2018), indicates that nurses with mental health problems and substance abuse are at higher risk of harming their patients, denigrating the nursing profession, injuring themselves, and harming the reputation of the nursing industry. Besides, working under the influence of alcohol and when one is not in their right psychological status affect the quality of work output (Hendrickson, Schmal, & Ekleberry, 2014). A nurse may fail to establish a nurse-to-patient rapport which is useful for collecting patients’ health information that helps for treatment when they are working under the influence of drugs (Adams, 2015). A drunkard and mentally ill health practitioner will, more often than not, fail to win trust and confidence of patients, which in effect, affects the nursing reputation and that of the industry at large (Smith, 2018).
Discussion
The increase in the number of patients in need of medical assistance had placed immense pressure on nurses. This can be attributed to the high nurse-patient ratio in most health facilities. More nurses ought to be trained and deployed to help patients. However, this comes at a time when there have been numerous critics regarding how some psychiatrists are trained. Respective accreditation bodies ought to intervene and propose the metrics that will be used to gauge if someone is qualified to deliver care. Nurses are likely to face challenges adapting to a new working environment especially if the workmates or the superiors are not supportive.
Some health facilities have minimal resources which make delivery of healthcare services challenging. Sabella & Fay-Hillier (2013) proposes that psychiatrist nurses have to cope with the problem of limited resources. Both the federal and state government should consider increasing the healthcare budget to ensure that everyone has access to quality and affordable healthcare services. Nowadays, there are more complex medical conditions which require the intervention of sophisticated medical gadgets and equipment. Healthcare providers should be prepared to treat patients from various ethnicities. Furthermore, anyone can fall ill regardless of their gender, age, country of origin and race.
Psychiatrist nurses may also face criticism and bias from members of the public. This can be attributed to the fact not everyone will be content with the quality of services offered at each health facility. However, psychiatrist nurses should strive to ensure that they deliver quality services at all times. Psychiatrist nurses are also vulnerable to various psychosocial and psychological challenges within the nursing profession. Nurses have to strive to balance their career with family without compromising any. At times, this may be challenging and may predispose them to mental disorders which in the long run can affect their performance and the reputation of the nursing profession.
In conclusion, nurses face a lot of challenges when disseminating care to the psychiatric patients. Nurses work in a challenging and uncompromised psychiatric unit especially for acute patients which requires highly specialized care. Increased number of psychiatric patients exceeds the number of qualified nursing care providers hence affecting the provision of quality care.
References
Adams, L. Y. (2015). Workplace Mental Health: Manual for Nurse Managers. New York: Springer Publishing Company, LLC
Appold, K. (2016, March). Experts Suggest Ways Deal with Challenges Surrounding Care of Psychiatric Patients. Retrieved from The Hospitalist: https://www.the-hospitalist.org/hospitalist/article/121834/experts-suggest-ways-deal-challenges-surrounding-care-psychiatricHendrickson, E. L., Schmal, M. S., & Ekleberry, C. S. (2014). Treating Co-Occurring Disorder: A Handbook for Mental Health and Substance Abuse Professionals. New York and London: Psychology Press.
Marie, M., Hannigan, B., & Jones, A. (2017). Challenges for nurses who work in community mental health centers in the West Bank, Palestine. International journal of mental health systems, 11(1), 3.
Marsella, A. J. (2011). Twelve critical issues for mental health professionals working with ethnoculturally diverse populations. Psychology International, 22(3), 7.
Sabella, D., & Fay-Hillier, T. (2013). Challenges in mental health nursing: Current opinion. Nursing: Research and Reviews, 4, 1-6.
Smith, A. B. (2018). Foundations of Social Policy: Social Justice in Human Perspective. (6th Ed.). The United States: CENGAGE Learning
Sobekwa, Z. C., & Arunachallam, S. (2015). Experiences of nurses caring for mental health care users in an acute admission unit at a psychiatric hospital in the Western Cape Province. AOSIS, 38(2), 1-11.