Book Review: Planning Care in Mental Health Nursing
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322200500030 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| Pages | 41-44 |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Author | Ian Noonan |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
yperspective in reviewing this comes
from both clinical practice and education, as a lecturer-
practitioner working in an emergency department
liaison service and teaching on pre and post-registration
mental health nursing courses. Planning Care in Mental
Health Nursing is aimed at, and written by, nurses in
various mental health care settings. It is structured in
five sections: the first addresses the stakeholders
involved in planning care (service users, carers and
service providers) and then four clinical contexts are
examined – primary care, severe and enduring mental
illness services, specialist services outside generic
mental health, and specialist practice.
The experiences and expertise of service users and
carers demonstrate throughout strong evidence of
consultation, individual contributions, and case study
examples highlighting the differences between having
careplanning done with you rather than to you. When I
first read the book, I was surprised that it was organised
by service provision rather than adopting a client-group
or problem-focused approach. Only on reflection did I
realise that this is how people actually experience
mental health services; the sometimes arbitrary
boundaries in service provision shaping the experiences
of people who use them. The acknowledgment and
exploration of occasional discord between partners and
‘unequal’ services, and how individual authors have
strived to address this in different settings, gives this
book an authenticity that is one of its strengths.
Each chapter is structured to provide an
introduction to the service setting and the theoretical
framework in which it operates with data relating to the
catchment population, prevalence and referrals. Further
information is given regarding the process and
application of assessment, care planning, evidence-
based interventions, reflective practice and service
development. This provides a unified reader in care
planning, giving points of comparison between settings.
Abalance between the philosophical concepts of
collaboration, communication, partnership and care, and
the process and practical ‘doing’ of mental health
nursing underpins each chapter.Thereareoften
Mmarked similarities between the theoretical frameworks
and nursing processes in the different areas, and
perhaps more similarities than differences in how these
are applied. As the book covers 12 different types of
service provision within four chapters, there is some
sense of repetition rather than development through
the text.
The book’s focus is on care planning in mental
health nursing,yet most mental health services are
multi-disciplinary and the care-planning process risks
being limited by restricting it to a partnership between
user and nurse. The editor acknowledges this
limitation and states his intention to focus on ‘the foot
soldiers, working at the care-face’. However,domestic
assistants, care assistants, students, social workers,
occupational and art therapists, psychologists, doctors
and carers all work at the ‘care-face’, and one of the
greatest challenges I have had in care planning has
been co-ordinating these roles and attempting to
persuade the other stakeholders to have a shared
purpose, understanding and investment in that
process.
As a practitioner, I would want to use aspects from
each of the different chapters/settings in a more
eclectic way – adapting the process to the individual
rather than seeing it as limited to the boundaries of a
particular service provision. This book has helped me
to reflect on the view of services and care planning
from a user perspective and challenged me about
ownership of planned care; my assumption had been
that agreement to or negotiation of a plan was equal to
collaboration and partnership. From an educational
perspective, Planning Carein Mental Health Nursing
would benefit both pre and post-registration students
and practitioners looking to develop their care-
planning skills, where the chapter most closely
matching their current clinical context would provide a
clear and comprehensive guide.
Ian Noonan
Lecturer-Practitioner in Mental Health
South London & Maudsley NHS Trust and Florence
Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery
King’sCollege London
The Mental Health Review Volume 10 Issue 3 September 2005 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 2005 41
Book Review
Planning Care in Mental Health Nursing
Robert Tummey (Ed)
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2005)
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