Can you tell us how and why you came to be a Mental Health Nurse?
In 2014, I rounded up my general nursing.
Before becoming a Nurse, I perceived myself to be an individual who wants to support my younger siblings.
I think that was where the nurturing quality of mine emanated from.
The second reason was because I was opportune to go for a clinical posting to a neuropsychiatric hospital around 2012.
This was where I embraced mental health as a calling because at the end of the 4 week programme, when the results came out, they announced that I’d done the best out of the whole batch of students they’d posted to the hospital.
So I said to myself, "I should look into this specific area of nursing."
I rounded up my programme within general nursing, and I went into psychiatry as a specialty. I qualified in 2017. I got my pin and I worked for a while, teaching within mental health departments within hospitals in Nigeria.
I thought, "It's high time to advance my career."
It spurred me to apply to work at Cygnet.
So I think basically my desire to be a nurse came from my position in the family tree and the experience in 2012.
That merged with my thoughts and my perspective about the nursing field, specifically psychiatry, has been a great choice for me.
Tell us about a typical scenario with a Service User that demonstrates how valuable your Nursing passion is, in improving care outcomes?
I remember a particular service user who was admitted recently, he came in and was having disturbances in thoughts and perception.
He was relatively depressed as well.
He couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, and was just struggling with the activities of daily living.
Medications were prescribed. The multidisciplinary teams came together. Together we explored and developed a unique care plan for him, to suit his individual's needs.
Then plans were initiated. The occupational therapy team did their bit, with our Nursing team working as the ‘middle people’ to ensure that the individual communicated their voice, to the MDT throughout.
I think there were a couple of times adjustments were made to the individual's prescriptions because the he verbalised that they weren't comfortable, causing some side effects. After that, we reached a situation where the individual improved drastically; their mood stabilised and they were able to eat again.
Having not been able to function, in the activities of daily living, with our support the individual was able to do near the optimal level again. In comparison to how they were admitted, this was such a great result!
And I still believe that due to the level of support the individual has taken so far, there’s still room for further improvement.
I think what really helped us to achieve this level of goal of providing the highest level of care possible, is singularly due to that concept of patient-centeredness.
There were no decisions made, without including the service user.
At every point, the individual was called upon before decisions were drawn and conclusions made.
So I think we are happy with the level of progress and in this particular scenario, in my mind when I see the individual functioning, improving as the day goes by, it makes me remember that I'm always trying my best and I really appreciate the team and the shared vision of the company we work for.
I think mostly what we do centres on delivering the highest quality care possible for each person.
We get compliments from people who have used the service and have gone back into the community, so that shows we’ve helped.
Thank you Goodness and we’d love to hear from you again to get more inspiring stories like this. If you want to see what vacancies we have to work within Nursing, alongside Goodness and his colleagues, please go to then apply today at join.cygnetgroup.com/nursing-jobs
