Sarah works in acute mental health

“Mental health nursing is a highly skilled and challenging area of nursing. As with all specialised areas, many of these skills take years to develop.

Mental health has long struggled to attract and retain nurses, and no commitment to ratios is only exacerbating the issue. We have many senior nurses retiring or leaving, and an increasingly junior and inexperienced workforce.

When nursing students come for clinical placement, it will often be their sole experience of mental health throughout their course, which means it’s a make-or-break placement.

Students frequently come to their mental health placements feeling apprehensive. With ratios we could support and mentor these students properly, thereby increasing the chance they have a positive experience and encourage them into mental health nursing.

Instead, they are thrown in the deep end with limited educational support.

Ratios would give our senior nurses time to mentor and educate our new grads, and help us retain new grads.

Ratios would allow us the time to build therapeutic relationships and to respond to people’s distress.

Ratios would allow us the time to reassure families, and to create environments where people feel safe and supported.

Ratios would help us pick up deterioration early, thereby reducing incidents of self-harm, violence and aggression.

Ratios would make a world of difference in mental health nursing.”