Community Psychiatric Nurse Job Description, Key Duties and Responsibilities

This post focuses on the job description of a community psychiatric nurse, to help you understand what they do.

It highlights the key duties, tasks, and responsibilities that typically make up the community psychiatric nurse work description.

It also presents the major requirements candidates need to meet to be hired for the community psychiatric nurse job.

Please, keep reading:

What Does a Community Psychiatric Nurse Do?

The community psychiatric nurse role is for individuals who have acquired a complete psychiatric nursing training, as well as having several years of working experience in a ward or community hospital, and are able to effectively carry out a series of recovery and supportive activities to people experiencing acute and continual mental illness.

This professional is an integral part of a community’s interdisciplinary mental health team and works from the community, visiting patients in their homes, as well as at a community operated mental health facility.

The community psychiatric nurse job description usually entails assessing patients’ clinical care needs and developing, implementing, and reviewing the program of care to ensure that quality service is provided to the patient.

Being the ones patients often call on first within the nation’s mental health system, community psychiatric nurses are responsible for referring patients to mental health specialists, including psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who are qualified to handle the patient’s need.

The psychiatric nurse working for a community mental health facility is also responsible for managing a caseload and will be actively involved in the management of complicated cases.

As a highly trained and experienced nursing professional, his/her duties also usually include providing teaching, supervision, and guardians to junior nursing staff, students, and interns.

He/she also plays the role of coordinating the activities of a team, and serves as a role model and a motivation to the staff members.

To be hired to hold this position, most employers would require the nurse to be currently undergoing a post registration and continuing educational program, in addition to having two or more years experience working in a community as a psychiatric nurse.

Community Psychiatric Nurse Job Description Example/Sample/Template

Here is an example of a job description usually executed by psychiatric nurses working at most community mental health hospitals.

• Carry out a complete patient assessment and determine their clinical management needs
• Perform planning, implementation, and evaluation of individual patient’s care plan, with the participation of all involved in the care
• Manage patient’s care, effectively plan and carry out risk assessment and management
• Supervise and periodically review service quality provided to patients
• Provide and ensure interventions enhance patients’ strengths and increase their involvement in valuable activities in the community
• Employ evidence based Assess psychosocial interventions in assessing and managing mental illness of acute and enduring manner
• Perform administration of medication following the general practitioners prescriptive authority and ensure that medication recording system is updated regularly
• Provide evidence based interventions in assessing and managing patients with dementia, and others with cognitive impairment that results in difficult behavior
• Participate actively in providing memory service initiatives for patient with dementia
• Take part in implementing the multi disciplinary team’s assessment and care plan for patients
• Ensure accurate records are set up and maintained for all contacts and activities following appropriate legislation and policy.

Community Psychiatric Nurse Job Description for Resume

The key tasks, duties, and responsibilities shown in the job description sample for the community psychiatric nurse above can be employed in making a resume for the post.

Resumes are important documents to have when looking for a job and you can write one for yourself.

The employment history section of the resume requires that you state your previous or current work activities as a community psychiatric nurse, which you can prepare by adopting the work activities in the job description sample above.

Community Psychiatric Nurse Requirements – Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities for Career Success

A psychiatric nurse looking for employment in a community mental health facility would need to develop or have the following skills, knowledge, abilities, and other attributes, which are considered important to excelling on the job:

• Strong creativity, flexibility, and the ability to work effectively under pressure
• Strong ability to work on own initiatives and achieve good results
• Currently undergoing post registration and continuing educational program to keep updated on current industry practices and procedures
• Having two or more years experience working as psychiatric nurse in an in-patient setting or a community based mental health clinic
• Strong ability to supervise the activities of a team and cope with a caseload of patients
• Ability to act as a role model to other staff and motivate them to higher performance.