Posts by Andy

Medication errors

I was just reading a report from the National Patient Safety Agency entitled ‘Safety in Doses’ (See link below). This report gives a review of medication errors reported to them during 2007.  The majority of these involve general medical settings although 9% of them (6551) happened within mental health services. Luckily, 96% of all incidents [...]


Akmal Shaikh

Despite a clear history of mental health problems in the period leading up to his arrrest and conviction for drug smuggling,  British citizen Akmal Shaikh was executed in China this morning.

Anyone with any experience of working with people who have mental health problems will easily identify elements of mental illness in descriptions of Mr Shaikhs [...]


Happy Christmas & Merry New Year!

Seasons greetings from everyone at the Mental Health Nurse Lecturers Tea Party
This blog is now one year old – thanks to everyone who has contributed, commented & most importantly read it over the past 12 months – see you in the new year.


A losing battle?

I was just reading this story from the BBC about a suggestion that the Scottish cannabis crop (worth an estimated £100 million) may now be bigger than the Scottish vegetable crop.
This comes in the same week that we had the story about the sacked Government drugs adviser. As usual then, plenty of stories about drugs.
Just ask a [...]


Half way through my first placement

This is the second guest post from Kate Hopley (first post here) who recently commenced a course here at BCU. Kate has also started a BCU mental health nurse student area on Facebook
I am now more than half way through my first placement, and I have had many new experiences since writing my last entry. I [...]


Hope for Mental Health Reforms – a US perspective

Todays guest post is from Nicole White from the USA.
The bailout that was signed by former President Bush in October 2008 opened up a new door to health reforms by requiring that group insurance companies require equal coverage for both mental and physical illnesses. This was a milestone in health insurance policies that had previously [...]


Schizophrenic man terrifies kids at party

This is a guest post from the people responsible for promoting an anti mental health discrimination campaign called ‘Time to change’.
We don’t normally do adverts but I thought that this would be ok — it would be very interesting to hear if you have any comments or observations?

 Time to Change is run by leading mental health charities [...]


Life as a new Mental Health nursing student

This blog has taken a bit of a break over the last few weeks & I am pleased to say that we are back in business & looking forward to continuing where we left off.

I am delighted to start us off with a guest post from Kate Hopley who has recently begun her mental nurse [...]


Guest post SCEPrE Fellowship : Trevor Adams

This is a guest post from Trevor Adams from the University of Surrey. Trevor is very well known for his work in the area of Dementia care and has been widely published. As ever, we are delighted to feature guest posters — so if you think you have something you want to say then please [...]


Let me tell you a story : the Reading for Recovery project

This is another guest post from Julie Cresswell, one of our ex BCU mental health nursing students who is now a qualified staff nurse. (This is Julie’s second guest post – see her earlier post here)
Following a comment from a member of staff regarding the lack of reading material on our acute ward, I decided to raise [...]