Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Project – Full Written

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Committee Chair

Tiffany Stewart

Abstract

Nurses care for many individuals with medical conditions, but also those who suffer from mental illness and are in an acute mental health crisis. Nonpsychiatric nurses often lack adequate knowledge and training while caring for individuals with mental health disorders and those in acute crisis, which can be a barrier to providing safe, effective care for this vulnerable population. When individuals are in crisis and present to the emergency departments, their first contact is with emergency room nurses who may lack the necessary skills to conduct a thorough assessment when evaluating for mental health disorders, including the presence of suicidal and homicidal ideation. This lack of knowledge and training impacts the nurses’ ability to care for these individuals safely. The desired outcome of this project was to significantly increase the self-efficacy, knowledge, and overall confidence of nurses caring for patients with mental illness presenting to the emergency department. The project aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational session on providing safe care to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. A pre- and post-test design was used to measure knowledge and perceived competency and confidence among 26 participants, with a hypothesis of at least 70% of participants scoring 80 or above on the post-test. Results showed 92% of participants scored 80 or above on the post-test, exceeding the hypothesis. The evidence provided validates the need for ongoing education and training for nonpsychiatric nurses to provide adequate, safe care for individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. Future studies should explore the implementation of educational modules in electronic format.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Download

Included in

Nursing Commons

Share

COinS