The Mental Health Nursing Research Unit (MHNRU) is a joint research partnership between the ACU School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine (Melbourne) in the Faculty of Health Sciences, and NorthWestern Mental Health, Melbourne Health.
Professor Kim Foster and the MHNRU team are delighted to receive a prestigious $317,500 grant from the Australian Research Council for a project in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services Victoria, NorthWestern Mental Health, Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation Victoria, and Health and Community Services Union.
The project aims to improve mental health nurses’ resilience, retention, and quality of practice through a large-scale trial of a workplace resilience program, and builds on the successful pilot of the program at NorthWestern Mental Health.
The resilience program was developed by researchers at Queensland University of Technology, Professors Ian Shochet and Jane Shakespeare-Finch, who are collaborators on the grant along with researchers from Monash University and University of Technology Sydney.
The program is a preventive approach in the context of workplace stress. There is a critical national shortage of mental health nurses, and the grant is recognition of the urgent need to improve mental health nurses’ retention through proactive approaches to strengthen staff wellbeing and resilience.