Importance Of Safeguarding

In this essay I will be discussing the importance of safeguarding within mental health nursing and child nursing, I have chosen to talk about this topic because student and registered nurses include this in their training and continue to be influenced by the importance of safeguarding in everyday practice. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) states that 50,500 children in the UK are known to be at risk of abuse. As nurses during practice and placement we need to ensure that we follow correct procedures that ensure that barriers are not crossed which will cause safeguarding issues. For Mental Health Nurses (RMN) this could include; ensuring that proper consent is given, ensuring that vulnerable adults in our care are safe and their welfare is

To overcome this nurses, need to attend regular safeguarding training and ensure that they follow the correct legislation that adheres to the country that they are practicing.

Diversity can have an impact on safeguarding as we have to treat everyone as individuals. Diversity is extremely important as we live in a very diverse world and people’s views around the world will all be different. One way to ensure that we treat everyone fairly and equally is to ensure nurses attend equality and diversity training, this will help to make sure that everyone is cared for fairly and individuals’ beliefs and wishes are taken into judgement.

Skills that a nurse may need to ensure that individuals are treated fairly and the care that they need is specific to them include; a good listener, this makes sure that the patient applies trust in you as a nurse and trusts you to help them in their time of need. Reliable, this helps the patient to have trust within you and this may help them with day to day lifestyle choices and could boost self-esteem. Good communication skills, this will ensure that the patient gets a say in the care that they receive and they have the right to refuse treatment, although this is not the case in some cases.

Within Mental Health Nursing and Child Nursing there are some similarities and differences in the way that a nurse may practice to ensure the safety of the patient, these include; the approach when explaining things to the patient, simplistic language will have to be used to ensure that the patients understand you, this then ensures that you can get consent from the patient. However, in Mental Health if the patient is deemed not to have capacity and has involvement with DoLs then treatment such as; medication can be administered against the patients will, for example if a patient is refusing medication you may need to give the medication covertly but to do this you have to inform a GP to have permission from