Education on Mental Health Competencies for Registered Nurses in the Emergency Department

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project is to increase emergency department nurses’ knowledge on mental health competencies; ultimately increasing and improving the care for behavioral health patients in the emergency department. Background: Visits to the emergency department for psychiatric complaints have been steadily increasing over the years. Research exploring emergency nurses’ attitudes, feelings, and comfort level to care for behavioral health patients show that nurses feel inadequately trained and unprepared. If nurses are unprepared to care for patients with mental illness, the safety and ability to provide quality nursing care, decreases. This can exacerbate patients who are already anxious or experiencing a mental health crisis. Methods: For nurses in the emergency department, a pre and post survey method was used to collect data before and after an educational intervention. Using the domains of the Behavioral Health Care Competency survey as a guide, an educational video was constructed with voiced over PowerPoint slides and video clips. The same survey was used to measure changes in nurses perceived knowledge and confidence of behavioral health care competencies pre-and post- education Results: Total participation was small (n=12). However, using the Wilcoxon-signed-rank to compare data, there was a statistically significant change in the total score overall (p=0.018, α=0.05). Conclusion: Data collected during this quality improvement project is congruent with previous study’s outcomes. Providing focused mental health education to nurses increases their understanding and assuredness to care for psychiatric patients in the emergency department.