Scottish Government

The foundation for action

WE NEED TO:

• Ensure all mental health nurses have access to values-based training. Training should be multi-disciplinary team-focused and should involve service users and carers [ACTION 1].
• Ensure that mechanisms are in place to embed values-based practice in practitioners' personal development plans and clinical supervision [ACTION 1].
• Encourage charge nurses in mental health settings to work with service user organisations to use existing recovery environmental audit tools to gauge their current practice and to help in the development of recovery-based approaches [ACTION 2].
• Develop a national framework for training in recovery-based practice to support the dissemination of recovery-focused frameworks into practice [ACTION 3].
• Support mental health nurses in reviewing and revising assessment and care planning frameworks and documentation in their organisations to ensure they:
  • reflect the key models of mental health nursing practice
  • maximise therapeutic contact time between mental health nurses and service users
  • support values and recovery-focused practice [ACTION 4].
• Create a national development programme for education, training and continuing professional development for acute inpatient care staff [ACTION 5].
• Ensure all inpatient units develop models of care based on the principles of the Act and the recovery approach [ACTION 6].
• Ensure the workforce implications of models of care recommended in this report are accounted for in the production of workforce plans [ACTION 7].
• Support and develop whole-systems models that promote continuity of care across service boundaries for the service user, family and carers, with planned rotation of staff across different service elements [ACTION 8].
• Develop a managed knowledge and practice development network for mental health nursing, initially focusing on acute inpatient care [ACTION 9].
• Develop a progressive competency-based framework, ranging from initial registration to consultant-level practice, for mental health nurses working:
  • across the spectrum of acute inpatient, crisis care and intensive home treatment services
  • in older people's mental health services [ACTION 10].
• Develop mental health nursing's contribution to community referral [ACTION 11].
• Support mental health nurses' contribution to psychosocial interventions and psychological therapies services using a stepped approach to competency development [ACTION 12].
• Develop mental health nursing's contribution to nurse prescribing [ACTION 13].
• Create nurse consultant posts to lead the development of mental health nursing's contribution:
  • across the spectrum of acute inpatient, crisis care and intensive home treatment services
  • to older people's mental health services
  • to psychosocial interventions and psychological therapies services [ACTION 14].
• Redesign the pre-registration mental health nursing programme to ensure a clear and consistent national framework [ACTION 15].
• Meaningfully involve service users, carers and practitioners in the design and delivery of pre-registration and post-registration mental health nursing programmes [ACTION 16].
• Identify and disseminate examples of good practice in service user and carer involvement in education to inform development on a national basis [ACTION 16].
• Enable lecturers in higher education institutions to have direct links with clinical practice [ACTION 17].
• Maximise service user, carer and practitioner involvement in selection procedures for student nurses [ACTION 18].
• Maximise and develop the role of the support worker in mental health services [ACTION 19].
• Support newly qualified mental health nurses through the 'Flying Start' programme and provide a planned rotational development and consolidation experience [ACTION 20].
• Strengthen and enhance leadership capacity and capability in mental health nursing [ACTION 21].
• Continue to ensure that all senior mental health nurses have access to leadership development opportunities, and extend access to staff nurses [ACTION 21].
• Ensure regular clinical supervision opportunities are provided for mental health nurses [ACTION 22].
• Ensure mental health nurses:
  • are involved in evaluations of new initiatives and services
  • can continue to build capacity and capability in developing the evidence base for mental health nursing interventions
  • are involved in contributing to research into recovery in Scotland
  • can influence the research agenda via the Scottish Mental Health Nursing Forum [ACTION 23].
• Create a more robust climate of learning, development, evaluation and research across the mental health nursing community in NHS Scotland [ACTION 23].