A blog about the desperate state of UK mental nursing, how we got there and how it just might be saved.
Ideas for organising the material.
I’ve thought more about how I’ll organise this site.
The problem so far is the wide and sprawling nature of the material. There are far too many topics and none of them sit neatly on their own, they all cross-pollinate and affect other domains.
Everything (probably) I want to cover comes under these meta-headings.
What is wrong. How to mend it. Unsustainable. Values. How services should work.
Where do we Britons want to be heading? Are we heading there or somewhere else?
Underneath these will be main headings. E.g. under ‘How services should work’ will come –
What is a mental hospital for? (What is it for now? What should it be for? How to get there.)
What is a community mental health team for?
What are specialist psychiatric services for? CAMHS, D&A, SCM, EIP, AO…
What should the purpose of the MHA be? What is the present purpose of the MHA?
What is a mental patient for?
What are psychiatric nurses for?
Here’s a list I’ve started of categories and tags for posts.
Calocane – Violence – Least Restrictive – Unsustainable – Seclusion – Medication (many sub-categories here) – CQC – Community Nursing – Mental Hospital – Sectioning and MHA – Assertive Outreach – Leadership – Bring back Enrolled Nurses – Bring back Schools of Nursing – Bring back the bins – Degrees, Diplomas and Certificates – Schizophrenia – Borderline Personality Disorder – What’s gone wrong? – How to mend it – The Worried Well – Relapse – With leaders like these –
And I’ll illustrate a lot of my points with real-life stories.
OSMN Glossary
ACVPU – Checklist for assessing levels of consciousness. Alert, conscious, responds to voice, responds to pain, unconscious.
AMHP – Approved Mental Health Professional. A non-medical professional e.g. Social Worker, RMN approved to assess patients for detention (or not) under the MHA
ASPD – Anti-social personality disorder
BILD – British Institute of Learning Difficulties. Used to be a storehouse of resources for Learning Difficulty professionals but has discovered there’s more money in being a quasi-regulator.
BPAD – Bipolar Affective disorder – not to be confused with BPD.
BPD – Borderline personality disorder (in UK MHS it has been ‘rebranded’ or euphemised as EUPD = Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. This is a bogus change, EUPD is a WHO/American classification, we use the DSM in the UK. Its been made to ‘protect’ the poor BPD from the ‘stigma’ of the term borderline.
C&R – Control and restraint. An old style course, now rescinded, that did what it says on the tin.
CPN – Community Psychiatric Nurse
CCO – Care Co-ordinator (one of the roles CPNs do but other professions also do)
DIP – Drug induced psychosis. A mental state, brought on by intoxication by drugs or alcohol which mimics a psychotic state but resolves within 48 hrs.
DNS – Director of Nursing Services
DSPD – Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (Unit)
EIP — Early Intervention in Psychosis
GFC – Global Financial Crisis 2008-9
GOOFC – Get out of jail free card
HPD – Histrionic Personality Disorder
MDD – Major Depressive Disorder
MDE – Major Depressive Episode
MHA – Mental Health Act 2018. (previously revised in 2007 and before that 1981)
MHS – Mental health services
MOP – Member of the public
MVA – Management of violence and aggression. Course. (includes RRI, C&R, SPEC and other pitiful terms that don’t even dare use the horrid word restraint)
NPD – Narcissistic Personality Disorder
NIC – Nurse in charge.
NIK – No Idea Kier
RCP – Royal College of Physicians
RMN – Registered mental nurse (rebranded as mental health nurse)
RNMH – Registered mental handicap nurse (rebranded as RNLD = learning difficulties)
RRI – ‘Reducing Restrictive Interventions.’ A joke ‘restraint’ course that spends 3/4 of its length teaching false, woke ideologies about how horrid nurses are to restrain violent patients.
PD – Personality disorder. Often serves as hospital shorthand for an ASPD or BPD and a euphemism for a time-wasting, bed-stealing, non-mentally ill patient.
RT – Rapid tranquilisation. Usually two injections given simultaneously to sedate a patient who has lost control and cannot calm down by themselves – or is completely crackers.
TMVPIOS – ‘The most vulnerable people in our society’. False, made-up, catch-all phrase which can include almost anybody, depending on who the editor wants to demonise this week.
TTK – Two Tier Kier