Authors (including presenting author) :
SZETO WL(1), WONG KH(2), NG HY(2), CHENG LY(2), TANG SK(1), LI MYM (2), LEUNG CH(2), HO TC(2), HUNG LY(2), LEE WKC(2), LAU CF(2)
Affiliation :
(1) Nursing Services Division, (2) Department of Psychiatry, United Christian Hospital
Introduction :
Community Psychiatric Nursing is one of the eight sub-specialties of psychiatric nursing under Hospital Authority. Nurses working in this specialty should have at least one year clinical experiences in psychiatry and preferably having specialty training so as to exercise reliable judgement during outreach visits. Undesirably, newly graduated nurses were recruited from open market to fill up those outstanding posts of Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) at the end of a financial year. A group of 15 Registered Nurses were allocated to Community Psychiatric Services (CPS) in February 2018 as CPN which made up of about 23 % of the CPS workforce. This outcome imposed a challenge not only to the clinical supervisors and management, but also the new comers themselves did foresee a threat in clinical practice. An intensive coaching program was thus designed for the new comers to fill the knowledge and experience gap, and to manage the expectation of clinical supervisors.
Objectives :
New comers can 1. Shortly taking up new role in the lifelong career of psychiatric nursing 2. Be counted on in clinical services
Methodology :
New measures addressing the clinical practice, theory and psychological preparedness were launched. Each new comer was paired up with a mentor for the first six months for individual clinical coaching. They were also nominated for relevant training for reaching clinical competency. Their collective clinical and psychological progress were monitored at the three monthly, followed by three bi-monthly group coaching sessions. Finally, a graduation meeting was conducted at their fifteen months of service.
Result & Outcome :
Program evaluation through returning of evaluation form from the new comers and feedback collected from focus group of supervisors. All new comers found that having a mentor can facilitate their adaptation to the work while series of coaching sessions built up their overall capacity. They were endeavouring in contributing to the services through comprehensive support from supervisors, mentors and peers. Supervisors reflected that after baptized in this tailored made and nicely-paced program, new comers were reliable to provide recovery-focused services to patients. Conclusion: The Start Well Program leads the new CPN achieving clinical competencies and thus patients were benefited.
