Your role is to promote and support a person’s recovery, helping them live independent and fulfilling lives.
Why choose mental health nursing
There are many reasons why you should consider a career as a mental health nurse. It offers you the chance to make a difference, a high degree of flexibility and a career with excellent employment prospects.
Join our nursing team
Your role is to build effective relationships with people who use mental health services, and also with their relatives and carers. You might help one person to take their medication correctly while advising another about relevant therapies or social activities.
Success comes from being able to establish trusting relationships quickly and to help individuals understand their situation and get the best possible outcome. You'll be trained about the legal context of your work and also be able to identify whether and when someone may be at risk of harming themselves or someone else.
You'll usually be based in hospitals, for example on a psychiatric ward or specialist unit, or in the community where you could work in a community health centre or in someone's home. If you work in a residential setting, you may do shifts and provide 24-hour care.
You'll work as part of a team which includes GPs, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, arts therapists and healthcare assistants.
Must have skills
Academic qualifications aren’t everything. Communication and interpersonal skills are crucial, as well as strong judgement, and the ability to teach, advise, and manage people.
If you're applying for a role either directly in the NHS or a university course, you'll be asked to show how you think the values of the NHS Constitution apply in your everyday work.
Training and career development
Once you have qualified as a mental health nurse, there are a wide range of opportunities. You could specialise in working with children and adolescents, as a primary mental health worker; or women or in a field such as transcultural psychiatry, looking at how mental disorders and their treatment can be influenced by cultural and ethnic factors. You may want to work or move into management, teaching or clinical research.
Pay and benefits
Your standard working week will be around 37.5 hours on a shift pattern which can include nights, early starts, evenings, weekends and bank holidays. As a mental health nurse, you’ll be paid on the Agenda for Change (AFC) pay system, typically starting at band 5.
You’ll also have access to our generous pension scheme and health service discounts, as well as 27 days of annual leave plus bank holidays.
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