nursingforsocialjustice

I love being a nurse. I have had a rewarding and inspiring 13 year career. I am so thankful for the personal growth that I have had because of nursing . However, I am also disappointed by nursing being in a subordinate position to other professions in health care. It’s not everywhere and it’s not in all clinical areas, but it’s particularly evident in my clinical area, mental health (and substance use is often grouped with this). I am also increasingly frustrated with the lack of clinically-based research, nursing driven research, that informs practices, policy, and program development in inpatient mental health in the places where I live and work.

I am increasingly at a loss for the evidence that is informing the day to day practice of nurses. I’m not sure how to address this in a system where the loudest nurse voices seem to be focused on things loosely patient related. And, this is not to say that evidence doesn’t inform and guide each individual nurses practice, my frustration is related to lack of the nursing perspective as significant in informing the system.

Medications have side effects. Psychotropic medications have many side effects, the evidence is well known. Less well known is the harms of regular and PRN psychotropic medication use in adolescent populations. But guess what? There are Canadian Guidelines. Are they used to guide day to day practice of clinicians? Hopefully.

I’m just going to list some references here with the hope of circling back later to write something in a more organized way at a later date.

Dinnissen, M., Dietrich, A., van der Molen, J. H., Verhallen, A. M., Buiteveld, Y., Jongejan, S., … & Hoekstra, P. J. (2021). Guideline Adherence of Monitoring Antipsychotic Use for Nonpsychotic Indications in Children and Adolescents: A Patient Record Review. Journal of clinical psychopharmacology, 41(1), 13.

Hayden, J. D., Horter, L., Parsons, T., Ruble, M., Townsend, S., Klein, C. C., … & DelBello, M. P. (2020). Metabolic monitoring rates of youth treated with second-generation antipsychotics in usual care: results of a large US national commercial health plan. Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology, 30(2), 119-122.

Jazi, S., Ben-Amor, L., Abadie, P., Menard, M. L., Choquette, R., Berthiaume, C., … & Ilies, D. (2020). Long-Term Metabolic Monitoring of Youths Treated with Second-Generation Antipsychotics 5 Years after Publication of the CAMESA Guidelines Are We Making Progress? The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 0706743720974847.

Walkerly, A., & King, M. (2020). Evaluation of initial atypical antipsychotic monitoring parameters in children and adolescents. Mental Health Clinician, 10(6), 354-357.

Peace,

Michelle D.