Mental Health Nurses Attitudes and Practice Toward Physical Health Care in Jordan

Abstract

Patients with mental illnesses are at high risk for physical disorders and death. The aim of this study is to describe mental health nurses' attitudes and practice toward physical health care for patients with mental illnesses. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to collect data using self- reported questionnaire from 202 mental health nurses working in mental health settings in Jordan. The study adopted translated version of Robson and Haddad Physical Health Attitudes Scale to the Arabic language. There was significant positive correlation between the participants' positive attitudes and their current practice (r = .388, p = .000), mental health nurses who have more positive attitudes regarding physical health care involved physical health care more in their current practice. Mental health nurses' attitudes affect the quality of care provided to patients with mental illnesses. The results provide implications for practice, education, and research.

Initial psychometric evaluation of the physical health attitude scale and a survey of mental health nurses

“…On the other hand, these findings are similar to the studies from three Asian countries (i.e. Qatar, Hong Kong and Japan) (Bressington et al, 2018) and from Jordan (Ganiah, Al-Hussami & Alhadidi, 2017). Some of this difference is probably related to the present Turkish sample being based entirely on nurses in an inpatient care setting, whereas other studies have recruited nurse participants from both inpatient and community-practice contexts.…”

“…Therefore, it is important to seek the views of nurses to improve patient care and to increase the quality of care. Although physical care is an important part of the roles of nurses, the literature still provides a small amount of data on their views (Bressington et al, 2018;Çelik İnce, Partlak Günüşen & Serçe, 2018;Ganiah, Al-Hussami & Alhadidi, 2017;Happell, Stanton, Hoey & Scott, 2014a;Robson et al, 2013a;Siren, Cleverley, Strudwick & Brennenstuhl, 2018).…”

“…Various studies have explored the involvement of mental health professionals in and attitude towards physical healthcare in Asian countries (Bressington et al, 2018), UK (Howard & Gamble, 2011;Robson et al, 2013a), Jordan (Ganiah, Al-Hussami & Alhadidi, 2017), Turkey (Çelik İnce, Partlak Günüşen & Serçe, 2018) and Canada (Siren, Cleverley, Strudwick & Brennenstuhl, 2018). The attitudes of mental health nurses towards and practice of physical healthcare for patients with SMIs have rarely been studied in Turkey.…”

The provision of physical health care by nurses to young people with first episode psychosis: A cross‐sectional study

“…However, at the clinical level providing physical health care remains a challenge for many nurses working in mental health setting (Ward, Wynaden, & Heslop, ; Wynaden et al., ). Several studies (Bressington et al., ; Ganiah, Al‐Hussami, & Alhadidi, ; Happell, Platania‐Phung, & Scott, ; Robson, Haddad, Gray, & Gournay, ) have been completed to gain an improved understanding of the challenges nurses experience using a quantitative measurement tool developed by Robson and Haddad (), and to evaluate attitudes nurses hold towards physical health promotion activities (Happell & Platania‐Phung, ; Wynaden et al., ). A qualitative study also identified the need for mental health nurses to change their nursing practices to address the unmet physical health care needs of mental health service users (Gray & Brown, ).…”

Safety attitudes, perceived organizational culture and knowledge of the physiologically deteriorating patient among mental health nurses: Cross‐sectional, correlational study

“…From a baseline of near zero and in this context of the growing perceived shortcomings of mental health nurses’ knowledge and practice related to physical healthcare, there has been a welcome increase in the number and quality of related empirical studies in recent years. In terms of very serious physical deterioration, surveys reveal that most mental health nurses report they could resuscitate a patient in cardiac arrest (Bressington et al, ; Ganiah et al, ; Robson & Haddad, ; Wynaden et al, ). However, across studies, between 11.0% and 32.7% of nurses do not express such confidence.…”