Iowa Wesleyan nursing students to visit Iowa Legislature again

By KARYN SPORY

Mt. Pleasant News

Iowa Wesleyan College nursing students will head back to the capitol on Thursday, March 19 to talk to legislatures about the importance of keeping the Iowa Mental Health Institutes open.

In Governor Branstad?s budget, he has proposed closing two mental health institutes in Mt. Pleasant and Clarinda.

This is the second time Lisa Kongable, associate professor of nursing, and her 18 nursing students will visit the state capital to talk about the importance of the MHI.

Kongable and her students will visit the capitol for the National Alliance for Mental Illness Capitol Hill Day.

Kongable said her students are going to speak with the House of Representatives for certain, but hope to speak to all of the legislature about the impact that closing the MHI will have, not only on their studies, but on Iowa as a whole.

Kongable and her students were last in Des Moines on Feb. 18 for the Iowa Nurses? Association Lobby Day.

?We had gone to part of the conference, but we also went on (Feb.) 18 to meet with the senate and to deliver the petition,? said Kongable.

The petition was started on Change.org by nursing student, Kaitlyn Dirth, and has nearly 8,000 signatures. The petition supports keeping the MHI open.

?We had hoped to deliver the petition to Governor Branstad, but he was not there at that time so we were at least able to formally present it to his office,? said Kongable.

Dirth will be a speaker at one of the events on Thursday.

This semester, Kongable?s students are taking a mental health course, which makes this discussion about the importance of keeping the MHI open all the more personal, Kongable said.

?I brought the issue to our class when we were talking about mental health care concerns and they just really pounced on it in a positive way and advocacy for the patients, but also for nursing education and psychiatric education,? she said.

Kongable added that the MHI is the main clinical site for her students. Nursing students at Indian Hills and Southeastern Community College also use the Mt. Pleasant MHI as do substance abuse counselors and social work students from other universities.

Every nursing student must have 90 clinical hours in caring for patients with a psychiatric diagnosis. Kongable said besides the MHI being logistically convenient, the different types of practices- acute care, Iowa residential unit or dual diagnosis unit- gives students a great variety of psychiatric mental health nursing and also specialty aspects.

Kongable said with the governor?s announcement to close the MHI, she has been scrambling to find alternative clinical sites for her students, just in case they can?t prevail in the fight to keep the institute open.

Kongable said finding a new clinical facility is a challenge. According to Kongable, hospitals like Great River Medical and the University of Iowa Hospitals have psychiatric beds, but nursing students from SCC and U of I already use those facilities to train. Also, she said throwing another 18 students into the mix would inundate patients and that?s not helpful or acceptable.

?I?m hoping they will reconsider and establish something at the MHI, if they?re not able to keep it going,? she said.