It takes a nurse with special skills to staff a behavioral health unit. Not only must your potential new hire possess all the clinical skills necessary, but they also need the soft skills called upon when caring for a specialized behavioral health patient population. Healthcare organizations seeking nurses to staff behavioral health units need to recognize these soft skills to hire the right nurses for the job.
Clinical and Competency Skills for Behavioral Health
Beyond the minimum qualifications of licensure, certifications, and experience, your behavioral health nursing candidate should be confidently proficient at de-escalation techniques and hold additional safety training certifications beyond the basics. Crisis prevention skills and management of aggressive behavior are crucial for nurses in the behavioral health sector.
Along with a solid foundation in clinical nursing, a behavioral health nurse candidate should also have experience in psychiatric health, preferably one to two years in an inpatient setting. With this experience, your potential new hire understands how to assess situations and work with crisis intervention. Psychiatric evaluation experience, medication management, which is crucial for some behavioral health patients, and specialized patient care contribute to the kind of experience important to a behavioral health nurse.
Soft Skills are Essential to Patient Outcomes
In addition to specific clinical skills and competencies, a nurse must possess strong soft skills for a career in behavioral health. These skills support the ability to use de-escalation techniques and provide the type of care necessary for the specialized patient population in behavioral health facilities. Safe, patient-centered care is essential for improved outcomes.
Here are the soft skills that you should look for when you’re staffing your behavioral health unit.
- Communication: Communication and active listening are crucial skills for understanding patients and building trust. Being able to communicate clearly and effectively, especially during a crisis, is beneficial to the patient and staff. Possessing these skills and working to hire them is a sign of an excellent behavioral health nurse candidate.
- Empathy: The ability to understand a patient’s position and recognize their need for support is critical for a nurse in a behavioral health unit. This also goes a long way toward fostering trust.
- Compassion: A compassionate nurse provides care without judgment. For patients processing complex emotions or trauma, the stigma often complicates care. Approaching with compassion supports the patient in so many ways.
- Observation and Non-Verbal Skills: Many behavioral health patients are unable to communicate verbally. Being able to read body language, such as erratic movements, helps nurses understand those non-verbal emotions and facilitates using non-verbal therapeutic calming cues.
- Patience: Emotional and behavioral health recovery requires patience, as the process isn’t linear and often takes time.
- Adaptability and Flexibility: In most clinical settings, situations can rapidly change, requiring nurses to pivot. Care plans are tailored to diagnoses and patients themselves. When you’re staffing a behavioral health unit, look for nurses who are flexible and can adapt to any situation seamlessly.
- Ability to Set Boundaries: Ethical care and safety are at the center of patient care in a behavioral health unit. Nurses must be able to set concrete boundaries with their patients as well as the patients’ families.
- Critical Thinking: Very often, the symptoms of someone in a crisis escalate quickly. Unpredictable and sometimes harmful behavior must be dealt with very quickly. The ability to make a complex assessment of the situation at the moment is necessary.
- Collaboration and Teamwork: The behavioral health care team, psychiatrists, physicians, therapists, and nursing colleagues depend on the support of the nurses, who are at the patient’s side, managing and taking care of their behavioral health needs. Look for a nurse who is experienced and competent at collaboration and teamwork.
- Crisis Management: This, in and of itself, isn’t one soft skill but calls on a combination of skills to manage. Crisis management and de-escalation require a nurse to remain calm, confident, and reassuring when a patient is in distress. In these crises, emotions often run very high, and someone must take control before events escalate.
Nurses in a behavioral health unit are called upon to manage complex cases in which patients’ emotions may become highly charged. These cases include acute psychiatric diagnoses, addiction and substance abuse, and geriatric health. Behavioral health nurses directly impact improved patient outcomes.
Looking for staff for your behavioral health unit? Please contact BOS Medical Staffing.
