Nursing and decision making in mental health nursing Essay

Nursing and decision making in mental health nursing - Essay Example While admitted as a patient in the mental health facility, Jo actually showed signs of improvement in that his emotional state grew more balanced and he showed signs of functioning as an ordinary person even though he was not given any medicine. He also regularly participated in discussions with the professionals and seemed to understand the methods to use so as to restrain his emotions when he experienced stressful occurrences in the outside world. Jo appeared to be on his way to full recovery when he was suddenly visited by two friends the evening after he had returned from his leave. The friends appeared to be in possession of cannabis as well as knives. When some of Jo’s fellow patients, who were in the same room in which Jo sat with his visiting friends, reported this to the nurses that they had heard about a prospective fight, they were removed from the room and Jo’s friends left even without being asked to. Soon after, Jo demanded to be allowed to leave the ward. Against the advice and suggestions of the nurses that he remain, he insisted and was then allowed to leave. Owing to the fact that the member of staff was anxious that Jo would return with weapons to the ward, they asked him to discharge himself before leaving. The authorities also informed the police of the presence of Jo’s friends and the fact that they were in possession of cannabis and knives before they left the ward. A Key Decision within the Case When a nurse is faced with a decision to make between harbouring a potentially destructive client or revealing his or her intentions to law enforcement authorities, the nurse is usually faced with the problem of having to decide whether to protect the other patients and respecting the rights of the patient who is showing the potential for causing harm to himself or others (Antonius, Fuchs, Herbert, Kwon, Fried, Burton, Straka, Levin, Caligor, and Malaspina 2010). In normal circumstances, the nurse would merely discuss the pat ient’s concerns with him or her and then offer advice on how best to tackle feelings of hopelessness and destruction before they could become unmanageable. The nurse will only consider the possibility of letting other people know about the problems of her patient if he or she refuses to take the advice that is being offered (Fiscella 2004). By letting her supervisors or even law enforcement authorities know about a client’s threats to cause harm to others, the nurse is actually violating the patient’s confidentiality (Wolf, Lehman, Quinlin, Rosenszweig, Friede, Zullo and Hoffman 2008). In this case, it can be said that the decision to inform the police of the presence of Jo’s friends and subsequent request to Jo to discharge himself from the ward when he insisted on accompanying his knife and cannabis carrying friends, is the key decision. Even though the Jo was begged to stay in the ward by the nurses, he insisted on going after his friends who had openl y spoken about a fight that was going to happen. The Ethical, Legal, Political and Professional Issues that are Related to this Key Decision Professional: In psychiatric practice, patients can make the choice to refuse treatment even if it may actually improve their lives. This means that Jo was merely exercising his rights by refusing to remain at the ward even when he was asked to remain by nurses who were worried that exposure to reckless characters would merely