Martina Costello

Graduate nurses in Australia are now comprehensively prepared and have limited mental health knowledge and experiences to work in acute mental health settings. As such, they would require support from the nursing education of their respective mental health services to support them to progress from novice to advanced beginner. However, there is currently a variation in nursing education that supports graduate nurses in transitioning to mental health nursing. Therefore, it is important to understand graduate nurses’ viewpoints of nursing education and its effectiveness for helping them. This presentation presents a Q methodology study that was undertaken to generate an in-depth and accurate understanding of graduate nurses’ experiences in one of Western Australia's mental health services. The findings revealed four types of graduate nurses, and they were: (1) graduate nurses who experienced challenges of being accepted by their nursing team; (2) graduate nurses who had low self-confidence about their mental health nursing knowledge and skills to practice in acute mental health settings; (3) graduate nurses who felt confident about their mental health knowledge and skills but experienced challenges to apply them to difficult clinical situations; (4) graduate nurses who felt confident with their mental health knowledge and skills and accepted by their nursing team. The findings highlighted that nurse educators might need to tailor education to meet the needs of graduate nurses progressing from novice to advance beginner in mental health nursing.