NHS at 75: Northern Ireland mental health nurse changing patient care after his own experience

As the NHS marks its 75th birthday, UTV speaks to some of the hidden stars working behind the scenes.

Mental health nurse Nathan Weir is leading change in how patients are cared for as a result of his own experience.

The Craigavon man qualified nine months ago - something which once seemed out of reach.

"I had a drug induced psychosis at the age of 18," he told UTV.

"That resulted in a hospital admission in a psychiatric ward... and ever since then I've always wanted to work in the environment that helped me. I couldn't actually do that until later on in life.

"When my wife graduated and qualified from university she said: ‘Right big lad, it’s your turn’.

"That’s when I joined up with the Open University through the trust and four years later I qualified."

Before studying nursing, Nathan was a peer-support worker at Bluestone mental health unit.

He explained that the role sees "someone who has experience of mental health work with others to give and provide inspiration that there is hope in recovery".

"You’d be amazed how many people can open up when they know that you’ve walked in their shoes and not just this big health care uniform," said Nathan.

The peer-support role was temporarily suspended but, thanks to Nathan's passion, it's now set to return, with his efforts being recently recognised by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

"The Royal College of Psychiatry did a review within the unit recently and one of the biggest deficits was that they found is a lack of peer support in the Southern Trust – I do believe we have some left in the community but as an acute hospital, we had none," said Nathan.

"I was one of the first and I was the last, so I went to my senior management team with a few ideas and said if we do these things with the re-launch of peer-support it will do very well.

"I’m now the lead of the re-launch of the peer-support hub within Bluestone.

"They then nominated me for the RCN Chief Nursing Officer Rising Star Award.

"We went to the awards ceremony and the next thing they were calling out my name that I’d won. I don’t think I could speak for 20 minutes after it.

"I was just kind of pointing – it was crazy.

"All I ever wanted to be was a nurse and to get an award to say that I’m a rising star and the nurse of the year awards it was very humbling, very, very humbling."

Colleague and Bluestone Ward Sister, Bronagh Shaw, told UTV how Nathan has informed changes to the delivery of care.

"He knows what it's like to be an inpatient in hospital," she said.

"He knows what it's like to go through psychosis. What we learn through a textbook Nathan can tell us through his day to day experiences. "He's a very caring individual, he brings a bit of craic to the team as well and makes it good fun."

As for the future, Nathan said he is "excited" and hopes to breakdown stigmas around mental health.

"People don't talk about mental health but realistically if someone broke their leg - you're not going to hide the fact you're go a broken leg… so why's mental health any different."

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