Nursing Student Needing Help with a Mental Health Teaching Project

[christinejacksn]

I have to do a 5 minute teaching project for clinicals & it has to be 5 minutes long. For example, if I would have gotten oncology I could have taught how to perform a self breast exam or for GI I would have taught how to change a colostomy bag. But with mental health, my brain isn't functioning enough to think of one thing I could teach about physically..

Could any of you suggest a topic I could teach about that lasts 5 minutes?

[Lareinamorena]

First thing that comes to mind is mindfulness breathing to relieve stress and anxiety.

[Peppermint_RN]

You could teach about different stress/anxiety relief techniques, such a deep breathing or meditation.

Or you could teach about grounding techniques for when people have anxiety attacks. (If you Google it, there are some good videos and examples of grounding techniques.)

[elprup, BSN, RN]

We blew up pictures of dogs showing their different sides (anger, happy, scared, etc). One of us also acted out what the dogs were showing. We had the patients tell us what each was feeling (the dog and the human) and how did they know, and a way to stay safe around them. It was different, but interesting. Patients and students get tired of seeing the same things over and over.

[Georgia peach RN]

Talk about early recognition of someone losing control and nonviolent crisis intervention

[NewBeginning]

Fun! Is it supposed to be a specific "skill" or a topic special to mental health. A few things come to mind:

1) Mental Health Nursing Assessment versus the good ole Head-To-Toe.

2) Obtaining informed consent for psychotropic drugs

3) Recognizing escalating patient behavior and interventions to use to de-escalate prior to acting out behaviors.

4) Seclusion / Restraint policies.

5) CPI techniques

These are just a few that popped into my head that may be good, easy teaching projects.

Good luck!

[TerpGal02, ASN]

Progressive muscle relaxation. It's my favorite group to run. Super easy to teach and very effective. Use it a lot myself in fact. Check out this book on amazon The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook):Amazon:Books I had to buy it in nursing school for psych clinical but worth every penny. My copy is so worn and bent up from all the use I've put it through after 2 years. Great techniques to teach patients AND practice yourself. I think every psych nurse should have a copy :)