The mental health assistant practitioner: an oxymoron?

The United Kingdom is currently experiencing a recruitment and retention crisis in its nursing workforce. Mental health care is a particular problem area. Widening access to health and social care careers is a challenge for educational and health care organizations. This discussion paper examines the congruence between an educational programme aimed at developing Mental Health Assistant Practitioners' and the organizational responses to the subsequent opportunities for practice innovation within mental health care services. Whilst the 'learning while working' philosophy of the educational programme has been enthusiastically embraced by many health care organizations, the change in management required for using these assistant practitioners in service innovation appears beset by organizational, cultural and professional concerns. Not least of which are the often ambiguous concepts of the role and purpose of being a mental health nurse. This paper argues that if current mental health nurses are unclear about their role it is oxymoronic to establish the mental health assistant practitioners.