Consultation Liaison Special Interest Group
About
The primary purpose of the ACMHN Consultation Liaison (CL) Special Interest Group (SIG) is to promote interest in and the development of CL nursing.
The CL SIG provides members of the College who have a particular interest in CL with a forum for exchanging news, views, and ideas in this evolving and emerging sub specialty in mental health nursing. The CL SIG promotes research endeavours and other matters of interest in CL by sponsoring an annual conference and via other means such as meetings or workshops that are considered timely and worthwhile. The CL SIG operates within the framework of the College's general guidelines for SIGs.
What does a CL mental health nurse do?
Broadly, a CL nurse focuses on the mental health care of people in non-psychiatric (generalist) settings, most commonly but not exclusively, in general hospital wards, emergency departments, and nursing homes.
The CL nurse aims to improve outcomes in patient care from a mental health perspective through working directly with patients and indirectly through increasing the capacity of staff to recognise and attend to the mental health needs of patients in these settings.
A CL nurse:
Resources
The CL SIG provides a suite of resources which are available to the public and that mental health nurses might find useful.
The impact of Mental Health Nurse Consultants on the care of general hospital patients experiencing concurrent mental health conditions: An integrative literature review
This open-access article in the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing by Julie Sharrock, Brenda Happell, and Sarah Yeun-Sim Jeong provides a literature review on the impact of Mental Health Nurse Consultants on the care of general hospital patients experiencing concurrent mental health conditions.
Join the SIG
Given the nature of this mental health sub speciality, nurses working in this field are usually pretty independent practitioners and often don't have regular contact with peers who share CL Nurse experiences and interests. This SIG offers CL nurses a way to connect with each other. You will need to log into the membership portal first to join.