Introduction
Nursing practice in non-psychiatric urgent care settings can still involve encounters with problematic patients having specific behavioral needs. This makes non-psychiatric nurses’ basic preparation for communicating with individuals across the behavioral health spectrum desirable. With attention to the behavioral health preparedness issue, this paper specifies the learning objectives for the practicum at the University of Maryland Urgent Care, intended leadership, collaboration, and observation activities, and the proposed timeline.
Learning Objectives
Three project-focused learning goals will inform my activities at the selected practicum site. In connection with the AACN Essential 5.1l and the course’s focus, objective one involves collaborating with urgent care facility managers/staff in analyzing the opportunities for safety-inducing organizational process improvement (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2021). Objective two pertains to the AACN Essential 5.3e, the practice area’s psychosocial condition management competency, and implementation and centers on advocating for policies to prevent workplace risks stemming from the lack of behavioral health resources, including nurses’ unpreparedness for working with mentally unstable individuals (AACN, 2021). Objective three incorporates the AACN Essential 6.1k, project dissemination, and urgent care nurses’ inter-team communication competencies and focuses on offering consultation in basic patient mental health support and compassion fatigue prevention in the nursing staff stemming from complex clinical encounters (AACN, 2021; Laco & Stuart, 2022). Therefore, the aforementioned reference points for self-development as a scholar-practitioner seek to promote the amalgamation of advanced-level competencies and project-related skills.
Activities to Undertake and the Timeline
Fulfilling the three objectives will require leadership, psychological environment investigation, and intra- and inter-professional collaboration activities aside from service provision. The environment-focused exploration activities will require engaging in patient assessment, RN collaboration, and nursing assistant supervision tasks and documenting how the clinical environment’s characteristics and patients’ mental health profiles can be conducive to the accumulation of emotional exhaustion in those involved in direct care or care mistakes stemming from nurses’ unpreparedness (Borges et al., 2019). With an adequate balance between clinical and observation tasks, these takeaways and the proposed education-based solutions will be reported to the management through leadership activities, such as presenting the teaching program’s summary and justifying the proposed timetable’s feasibility. Regarding the collaboration component, nursing staff supervision, educational program implementation, pre-education/post-education satisfaction and behavioral health competency assessments, and the dissemination of results will be initiated to fulfill the objectives above (Winokur et al., 2022). Table 1 further specifies how the listed activities will encourage a smooth transition from pre-implementation exploration to evaluation and dissemination.
Table 1: Practicum Timeline.
Conclusion
In summary, the upcoming practicum experience will promote reaching three objectives that center on graduate-level advocacy, communication, and education skills. Achieving them within the frame of a 256-hour practicum requires thorough planning and initiation of leadership, investigation/observation, and collaboration/education activities. Hopefully, the proposed time management strategy will promote meaningful competency gains for the facility’s staff and cost-effective process improvement ideas for the management to consider.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education. Author.
Borges, E. M. D. N., Fonseca, C. I. N. D. S., Baptista, P. C. P., QueirĂłs, C. M. L., Baldonedo-Mosteiro, M., & Mosteiro-Diaz, M. P. (2019). Compassion fatigue among nurses working on an adult emergency and urgent care unit. Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem, 27, 1-6. Web.
Handini, F. S., Weu, B. Y., Heryyanoor, H., & Purwanza, S. W. (2019). Factors that influence professional quality of life (Pro-QoL) on clinical nurses. Jurnal Ners, 14(3), 393-396. Web.
Laco, R. B., & Stuart, W. P. (2022). Simulation-based training program to improve cardiopulmonary resuscitation and teamwork skills for the urgent care clinic staff. Military Medicine, 187(5-6), e764-e769. Web.
Winokur, E., Zamil, T., Loucks, J., Munoz, K., & Rutledge, D. N. (2022). Hospital nurse competency to care for patients with behavioral health concerns: A follow-up study. Journal for Nurses in Professional Development, 38(2), 71-75. Web.