Psychiatric Nurses Accounts:Creating Clinical Learning Environment

Although I was trained as a nurse, I became curious about the views of psychiatric nursing staff as to what they feel would create a clinical learning environment for them, as a result of having my dearly beloved father admitted to a medical ward. This created a fear in me that surprised me. I began to feel concerned about the competencies of nurses as I observed the care that was being offered to him. My experience had taught me that a ward environment generated an atmosphere in which a collaborative and transparent form of nursing care emerged, an atmosphere in which the hand-over between professionals communicated patients' needs ¿ from making sure that patients' bedding is comfortable, to checking whether they are trying to communicate something, to being sure that their medication has been properly given. Consequently, I became curious as to whether nursing staff themselves had views as to what is needed to create an environment that would sustain the urge they had felt to take up nursing in the first place. This book is the result of that study.