The psychiatric practice requires efficient tools to estimate the mental health of patients with psychiatric and neurological disorders. Advanced nurses’ practice requires professional assessment methods implementation contributing to the better quality of the medical services. In order to provide high-quality treatment and ensure the patient’s safety, nurses should be able to estimate mental health conditions. The clinical assessment of mentally-ill patients is an essential point in achieving the advanced nurses’ goals. It includes the procedure called the mental status examination (MSE) (Das & Voss, 2021).
This process is multi-leveled and has various steps and components to discuss: appearance, motor activity, speech, mood, thought process, content, and others (Das & Voss, 2021). The primary aim of the current work is to discuss all the components of MSE, emphasizing its role in advanced nurses’ practices.
The first factor is the analysis of the general appearance and behavior. For example, the worn outlook, hair, and clothes can indicate particular mental disorders such as anxiety or schizophrenia. Hygiene is also an essential factor in estimating the appearance of the patients. The next factor is evaluating the patients’ behavior (Das & Voss, 2021). The perfect example of distortion behavior is the rapid change in the mood from aggression to goodwill. The third factor worth analyzing is motor activity (Das & Voss, 2021). The patient’s moving patterns and posture can tell a lot about the mental state. For example, the inability to stay in one place indicates anxiety.
The fourth component addresses the mood of the patients and the affect notion manifesting in the different emotions. Patients reporting constant anxiety and sorrowful emotions may be at a high risk of clinical depression. The patients’ feelings may provide a lot of valuable information about their diagnosis. The fifth factor that nurses should estimate is the thought process and content (Das & Voss, 2021). The main problem here is the lack of goal-oriented phrases and utterances.
The illogical formulation of thoughts and consistent change of the subject can indicate dementia or schizophrenia. The thought content can be identified only through the interviewing. Through this collaboration, the nurses can show suicidal intentions revealing such conditions as depression and anxiety. The fourth component addresses the mood of the patients and the affect notion manifesting in the different emotions.
The fifth feature is the world perception of the patients. It can be executed through the interview, highlighting the possibility of visual hallucinations. Another theme to discuss here with patients is disturbed sleep and sleep paralysis (Das & Voss, 2021).
For example, often-occurring hallucinations can be the symptom of delirium or acute intoxication. The seventh component is cognition and attention concentration. These factors can be estimated through unique mechanisms such as Montreal Cognitive Assessment (Das & Voss, 2021). Moreover, here the nurses can implement the attention-focusing tasks to find out the focusing level. For example, the first stages of dementia can cause distorted consciousness. The last factors include the judgment and insights of patients regarding their illness. This can be seen in the refusal to talk, take medicine, or compare their mental state to normal. The inability to estimate the atmosphere and recognize the place patients are in indicates bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
MSE is essential in the nursing advancing factor. The main concerns of the patients and clinicians are the high-quality pre-diagnostic and nursing errors (Jakimowicz et al., 2017). The exploration of MSE and its practical implementation can contribute to the development of the nursing sphere and establish prominent medicare patterns. Each of the mentioned above factors has a significant role in advancing the patients’ safety and improving the faster treatment of people with mental illnesses.
References
Das, J., & Voss, M. (2021). Mental status examination. STATPearls. Web.
Jakimowicz, M., Stankiewicz, G., & Williams, D. (2017). A systematic review of experiences of advanced practice nursing in general practice. BMC Nursing, 16(6), 1–12. Web.