Case Study, Mohr

CHAPTER 9, the Nursing Process in Psychiatric-Mental Health Care

In completing the case study, students will be addressing the following learning objective:

Apply the nursing process to psychiatric-mental health nursing.

The student nurse is assigned to assist the psychiatric nurse with the admission interview of a client at the psychiatric hospital. The nurse explains to the student that the interview is very important in obtaining a total health history of the client. The nurse should be courteous and respectful of the client to obtain as much information from the client as possible. Assessment information should include the subjective information from the client with the reason for needing treatment, the cause of the present problem(s), and the client's expectation of the outcome of treatment regimen. The nurse alerts the student to the need to be sensitive to both verbal and nonverbal behavior of the client and to focus on topics that seem important to the client.

(Learning Objective: 1)

a. How can attention to the client's nonverbal cues be of value in an interview?

b. Why is the interview the most important aspect of the nursing process?