Mental health nurse

Mental health nurse job description: Typical employers | Qualifications and training | Key skills | Useful links | Find jobs and courses

Mental health nurses work as part of a team of professional and medical staff that includes doctors, social workers, therapists and psychiatrists.

Typical duties of the job include:

• assessing and planning nursing care requirements
• organising workloads
• visiting patients at home
• building relationships with, reassuring, listening and talking to patients
• administering medication
• agreeing/reviewing care plans and monitoring progress
• giving advice and arranging support for patients, relatives and carers
• liaising with doctors, social workers and other professionals
• assessing treatment success at case conferences/ meetings
• writing and updating patient records.

Shift work or on-call rotas can sometimes be part the job.

Typical employers of mental health nurses

• the National Health Service (NHS)
• general, psychiatric and secure hospitals
• residential and nursing homes
• community and rehabilitation units
• special units within prisons.

Advertisements appear in newspapers, NHS trusts/local council jobs lists, and publications such as Nursing Times, Nursing Standard, Health Service Journal and British Medical Journal. Previous relevant experience is not essential, but any gained caring for/working with people can be helpful.

Qualifications and training required

Qualification necessitates undertaking a three-year diploma course or a three to four-year degree course. Graduates with a degree in a relevant subject such as life, health, biological or social sciences can qualify via a shortened two-year postgraduate diploma course.

Applications for diplomas and undergraduate degree courses should be made through UCAS; those for shortened postgraduate courses should be made directly to the relevant institutions. You'll need to apply about a year in advance of the course commencing.

Key skills for mental health nurses

• good health and fitness
• excellent teamwork skills
• verbal/written communication skills
• resilience
• stamina.