Physical Health Care for People with Severe Mental Illness: the Attitudes, Practices, and Training Needs of Nurses in Three Asian Countries

Abstract

People with severe mental illness (SMI) have considerable unmet physical health needs and an increased risk of early mortality. This cross-sectional survey utilized the Physical Health Attitude Scale (PHASe) to examine the attitudes, practices, and training needs of nurses towards physical health care of people with SMI in three Asian countries (Hong Kong, Japan, Qatar). Cross-country differences were explored and linear regression was used to investigate if nurses’ attitudes and confidence were associated with their level of involvement in physical health care. A total of 481 questionnaires were returned. Hong Kong nurses were less involved in physical health care than those from Japan and Qatar. Nurses’ attitudes and confidence were significant predictors of their participation in managing physical health. Compared with western countries, more nurses in this study felt that mental illness was a barrier to improving physical health. Three-quarters reported that they needed additional training in promoting cardiometabolic health. The perceived need for additional training in physical health care was held by Mental Health Nurses (MHN) irrespective of their type of nursing registration and nationality. Nurse educators and service providers should reconsider the physical health care training requirements of nurses working in mental health settings in order to improve the physical health of people with SMI.

The provision of physical health care by nurses to young people with first episode psychosis: A cross‐sectional study

“…Nurses working in mental health need to be competent to provide physical health care to service users (McCloughen et al, 2015) but their educational preparation can influence their physical health care provision. Professional development to increase all nurses' physical health literacy and skills is important to improve the health disparity experienced by mental health service users (Bressington et al, 2018;Hemingway et al, 2014).…”

“…However, at the clinical level providing physical health care remains a challenge for many nurses working in mental health setting (Ward, Wynaden, & Heslop, ; Wynaden et al., ). Several studies (Bressington et al., ; Ganiah, Al‐Hussami, & Alhadidi, ; Happell, Platania‐Phung, & Scott, ; Robson, Haddad, Gray, & Gournay, ) have been completed to gain an improved understanding of the challenges nurses experience using a quantitative measurement tool developed by Robson and Haddad (), and to evaluate attitudes nurses hold towards physical health promotion activities (Happell & Platania‐Phung, ; Wynaden et al., ). A qualitative study also identified the need for mental health nurses to change their nursing practices to address the unmet physical health care needs of mental health service users (Gray & Brown, ).…”

Nursing interventions in mental health and psychiatry: Content analysis of records from the nursing information systems in use in Portugal

“…With this purpose in mind and considering the wide range of nursing interventions identified in the information systems in Portugal, all the interventions that were not specifically associated with mental health and psychiatry were excluded, including those associated with physical health care. Bearing in mind the relationship between mental and physical health supported by the literature (Blythe & White, ; Bressington et al, ; Robson, Haddad, Gray, & Gournay, ), this could be a limitation, because it may have led to the exclusion of certain important aspects of mental health nursing.…”

Prevalence, nature and predictors of omitted medication doses in mental health hospitals: A multi-centre study

“…One other published study of MAEs in mental health hospitals conducted a similar comparison, finding that a greater proportion of errors involved non-oral administration routes on two elderly units [18]. Targeted investigation into the causes of this observation could include exploration of variable practices of medication storage (noted to be a causative factor in some types of MAE in psychiatry [9]) and awareness and training of specialist mental health staff in physical health illnesses which has been previously highlighted as an area for development for nurses, for example [33,34].…”