Older adults suffer from mental health problems at greater rates than younger adults, particularly the three “Ds”: depression, dementia, and delirium. Yet there are very few geropsychiatric nurses in the United States and no formal credentialing for the field. To address this gap in our health care system, the John A. Hartford Foundation has supported the American Academy of Nursing’s Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative. The goal of the initiative is to improve the quality of mental health care provided to older adults by enhancing the knowledge and skills of nurses. To do this, the Hartford Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative has created and disseminated core geropsychiatric competencies and curricular materials tailored to all levels of nursing education.
Last month, Medscape Medical News interviewed Lois Evans, PhD, RN—one of the Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative’s principal investigators (along with Kathleen Buckwalter, PhD, RN and Cornelia Beck, PhD, RN)—about available resources to improve mental health nursing for older adults. You can read the interview here with a free registration on Medscape. An additional geropsych resource of note is a recent webinar hosted by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in partnership with the Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative on how to utilize their resources and infuse geropsychiatric content into nursing curricula. Information is available here, with a recording of the webinar soon to follow.
Anyone with an interest in geropsychiatric resources should check out not only the interview and webinar, but also the extensive collection of geropsychiatric nursing curriculum materials available on POGOe, the Portal of Online Geriatric Education. The more nurses we reach, the more we can improve mental health care of older adults.