ProNurse

Hi everyone,

I am still very new here but have just a quick question: from what I have been reading here & on other websites it often comes accross that MH nurses don't tend to actually use the the basic nursing skills learnt during the 1st year of the degree..... giving injections and so on...or hardly ever... if this is the case.... why do they have to do a whole year of CFP....? Is it actually useful for MH nurses to spendng a year learning about skills that they may not really use in their day to day work with mental health sufferers...? Perhaps I am mistaken.

Looking forward to clarification 

Thank u x

Hi Croatoan,

Thank you for your reply That is what I was suspecting...that the skills learnt during the CFP don't often get used by MH Nurses....ummmm.... I am hoping to apply to do a Nursing course for Sept 2012 but I am undecided .... do I want to do Adult or MH...? My background & experience would indicate I should do MH.... but I am also interested in the actual Nursing skills... (the ones that are learnt in the first year and not used...) 

So this just makes my decision even more complicated! I was hoping that a combination of the two would be the answer....  but it looks like it's one of the other........ it's a good thing I have plenty of time to decide.... I am thinking maybe I will look into doing an Anatomy & Physiology course and see how I get on with that...

Anyway, I will carry on thinking...

Thank you

Not wishing to start an argument but most of the skills you talk about lie outside the scope of CFP and are simply skills anyone who goes on a specific course will learn (or will pick up when on the wards).  If the OP gets a job as a CPN, they may be sent on a half day course and at the end of it they'll be able to do venepuncture.  In fact someone could walk in off the street,  do the course, and be able to do it as well any nurse, if theyv did it often enough, because venepuncture is a "hard" skill, something that can be learned quickly and easily because it is, basically, easy.

A quick look online shows me I can learn both venepuncture and male catheterisation on a one day course costing £90 - in fact at that price, it may be only half a day. I can learn ECG monitoring in a day as well. This is clearly not brain surgery we're talking about.  None require a high level knowledge of physiology and any knowledge at all of mental health nursing.

We need to get out of this idea that to be a wonderful nurse you need to know lots of facts - not that we will, the RCN in its wisdom has decided that nurses need to know about facts more than they need to know about people.  The best mental health nurses I've met are not repositories of information, but they are very good at empathising with their patients.  They know when someone requires a firm hand and when they require a more laid back approach.  They know when they need a hug (frowned upon I know, but by god it can work wonders) and when they need space and so on.  And they know what to do when situations arise.  I would  much prefer to be working alongside someone who is great at de-escalating tricky situations than someone who can tell me the ins and outs of what's going on in the brain of someone suffering from schizophrenia. 

This isn't to say there's anything wrong with knowing lots of facts, on the contrary, it can be extremely useful, but does a mental health nurse need to know about the chemistry of the human brain or the chemical reactions of a certain drug on the body to make them a better nurse? I don't think so.

All I need to know, more than I ever could know, about side-effects and medication can be found in the BNF.  I don't need 12 months to learn how to use a BNF.  Blood tests are simple.  If you have any doubts, pick up the phone and get them done.  I honestly don't see what so difficult about that that I need 12 months of CFP.

Basic obs are easy - even though another ruling now seems to have stopped HCAs doing them in yet another jobs for the boys ruling by the RCN/NMC.  If they weren't so easy you wouldn't find 1st year student nurses all over the country being made to do them the second they walk onto a ward.  If you can count, you can do basic obs.  Some knowledge, certainly not at a high level, is needed to interpret the readings, but if you had no knowledge at all, you could always open the EWS book and read the scores and then follow the instructions.  As to whether mood and medication is skewing the results, well, it's not your job to make that decision.  If the scores are outside limits, you phone a doctor or the EWS team.  I could learn to do basic obs in ten minutes ditto take BMs and know when there's a problem. 

All medication has side-effects, it's why we monitor patients.  If we see, or measure, anything out of the ordinary, we inform a doctor.  We give our opinion, but it's their decision how to treat the problem.  Seeing and measuring things out of the ordinary is not a difficult skill to learn, it's why the girl on the till at Tescos can get a job as an HCA and be specialing and observing patients within a day or two of starting work - and as this is much a greater part of her job than that of a nurse, she will quickly become much better at it than nurses, for all their training.  As an agency nurse I often go into situations where my knowledge is minimal at best and I am utterly dependent on HCAs, who for all their lack of "high level" knowledge run the ward admirably.  They know the patients, they know when there's something not right and they know how to handle problems and that is because of familiarity and actually having spent time with patients and not because they have, or necessarily want, the kind of knowledge taught at university.  And they certainly don't need it.

I'm sure perinatal mental health is fascinating, though so specialised there can be no more than a handful of RMNs working in the field - perhaps a reason why it was not even touched on during my training.  Again, courses will fill in the gaps for those entering the field.

I've worked forensics, acutes and PICU, SMS and elderly (the areas I'd imagine 90% of RMNs work in) and only in elderly have I used even a modicum of the skills I was taught on the CFP and only then at the most basic level.  Nothing has yet made me change my mind about the CFP. 

The original question was whether CFP is useful - and extrapolating from that, could that year or 18 months be better utilised for mental health nurses?  I think a knowledge of counselling, CBT (or whatever comes next), and much much more about de-escalation and managing challenging situations would be a million times more useful than the CFP for mental health nurses. As would spending half that year on a general ward.