The next generation of Mental Health Nursing!

My name is Laura, I’m 19 and I live on the South coast of England. I go to Solent University in Southampton and I am a 1st year Student Mental Health Nurse. I feel passionately about the progression of mental health care and reducing the stigma surrounding mental health! As well as studying mental health nursing, I also work as a healthcare assistant.

Why Mental Health Nursing?

I wanted to do my degree as I always knew I wanted to work in an area of mental health and after starting my work as a healthcare assistant (I worked with a mixture of nursing and dementia residents) it kick started my passion for care.

My dream job

My dream job once I qualify would be to go out with paramedics in the ambulances specifically to attend mental health jobs. These jobs make up a huge number of calls to the ambulance service and having specially trained mental health nurses provides instant crisis care and relieves some of the pressure on paramedics.

I would also love to work in primary care as in my opinion mental health nurses would be a huge asset to the practice teams. As all mental health nurses trained to the 2018 standards will be trained as prescribing nurses, we can improve access to primary mental health care, reducing waiting times and relieving the pressure on GP’s.

I am passionate about using my fresh outlook to help improve access to mental health services as I feel everyone deserves the treatment they need at the earliest opportunity!

I would love to hear other peoples opinions on this topic too so please leave a comment below or message me on my Instagram page and we can have a chat about this!