Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to describe specific art therapy activities that student nurses may use as intentional communication tools when interacting with mental health patients in the clinical setting. The suggested art therapy activities in this paper reflect a review of the evidence as well as over 30 years of nursing faculty field experience in the mental health clinical setting. Student nurses can use basic coloring or drawing activities to enhance communication with mental health patients. For purposes of this discussion, art therapy is defined as the usage of crayons, coloring, paper, and drawing.
Highlights
Undergraduate nursing students are typically required to complete a clinical experience with acute care mental health patients, frequently in the hospital setting within a locked ward
Ensuring a strong educational foundation for students requires nursing faculty to ask themselves: What specific art therapy activities can student nurses use as intentional communication tools with mental health patients? How is this to be done? What guidelines or instruction should we provide our students?
Promotes the Student Nurse-Patient Therapeutic Relationship. Art therapy activities such as basic coloring or drawing are important tools to encourage the development of the student nurse-patient therapeutic relationship
Summary
Undergraduate nursing students are typically required to complete a clinical experience with acute care mental health patients, frequently in the hospital setting within a locked ward. Student nurses may initially feel uncomfortable within this clinical environment because they have not yet learned how to approach, interact nor communicate with hospitalized patients with varying mental health states and diagnosis [1]. Therapeutic communication is commonly viewed as face to face interaction(s) with patients with a goal to promote patient physical and mental well-being It is a key component of most mental health nursing curriculums and viewed as quite useful in working with patients who are experiencing forms of anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, and/or perceptual disturbances. Mental health patients may experience feelings of anger or frustration at being placed in a locked ward This is true for those patients who have been admitted to the acute care psychiatric unit on an involuntary basis and who do not want to be there. Art becomes a useful “tool” to provide a “voice” to the voiceless in creating connections with unspoken mental health patients’ thoughts [5]
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