ACT Psychiatric Nurse

Description

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Include the following:

• Provide service coordination (case management) for an assigned group of clients including coordination and monitoring the activities of the individual treatment team (ITT).
• Assume primary responsibility for developing, writing, implementing, evaluating, and revising overall treatment goals and plans in collaboration with the client and the ITT.
• Providing individual supportive therapy and symptom management, ensuring immediate changes are made in the treatment plans as clients’ needs change.
• Educating and supporting clients’ families.
• Advocating for clients’ rights and preferences.
• Participate in and conduct parts of the client-centered comprehensive assessment of psychiatric history (e.g., onset, course and effect of illness, past treatment and responses, and risk behaviors), mental status, and diagnosis; physical health and dental health; use of drugs and alcohol; education and employment; social development and functioning activities of daily living (e.g., self-care, living situation, nutrition, money management); and family structure and relationships.
• Consult with community agencies and families to maintain coordination in the treatment process.
• Perform shift management in coordination with other ACT shift managers according to established policies and procedures.
• Provide on-call crisis intervention covering nighttime hours and serve as a backup to evening and weekend staff.
• Document client progress to maintain a permanent record of client activity according to established methods and procedures.
• Participate in daily staff organizational meetings and treatment planning review meetings.
• Take the lead role or participate in providing medication administration and medical services.
• Under the direction of the team psychiatrist and in collaboration with other registered nurses on the team; develop, revise, maintain, and supervise team psychopharmacologic and medical treatment and medication policies and procedures including transcribing, administering, evaluating, and recording psychotropic medications prescribed by the team psychiatrist; evaluate and chart psychotropic medication effectiveness, complications, and side effects; and arrange for required lab work according to protocol.
• Under the direction of the team psychiatrist and in collaboration with other registered nurses on the team, organize and manage the system of getting medication to clients and integrating medication administration tightly into clients’ individual treatment plans.
• Under the direction of the team psychiatrist and in collaboration with other registered nurses on the team, manage pharmaceuticals and medical supplies.
• In collaboration with the team psychiatrist, coordinate, schedule, and administer medical assessments of client physical health, making appropriate referrals to community physicians for further assessment and treatment, and coordinate psychiatric treatment with medical treatment.
• Participate in treatment, rehabilitation, and support services.

• Provide ongoing assessment of clients’ mental illness symptoms and clients’ response to treatment. Make appropriate changes in treatment plans to ensure immediate and appropriate interventions are provided in response to change in mental status or behavior which put clients at risk (e.g., suicidality).
• Provide symptom education to enable clients to identify their mental illness symptoms.
• Provide direct clinical services to client on an individual, group, and family basis in the office and in community settings to teach behavioral symptom-management techniques to alleviate and manage symptoms not reduced by medication and to promote personal growth and development by assisting clients to adapt and cope with internal and external stresses.
• Provide individual and group treatment in the office and in community settings in a stage-based treatment model that is non-confrontational, considers interactions of mental illness and substance abuse, and has client-determined goals.
• Coordinate with outside inpatient services to detoxify clients and establish…