"10Best Practices in Mental Health Nursing to link the researchers with other people who function as the linkage to the registerednurses and the heath care delivery organizations. The strategy of dissemination creates ademand for the use of evidence in practice to the target social system. The information isavailed to the mental health care professionals to ensure that they implement the bestpractices in risk assessment and management to the mentally ill patients (Hughes, 2008).The method of communication used ought to be appropriate to the target social system.Some of the effective methods used include community health campaigns, training, massmedia advertisements, and distributable leaflets to the health care professionals workingwith the mentally ill patients. There is evidence that the use of mass media messagestargeted to the specific group has an effect on the use of the health services for thetargeted purpose. It would be challenging to implement the best practices in mental healthnursing without having appropriate communication and dissemination methods. As such,the identified evidence-based practices for use in mental health nursing ought to beappropriately distributed to ensure that the implementation process is effective. The targeted social systemThe implementation of the best practices in mental health nursing requires aninput of the best practice users. The members of the social system influence how quicklyand widely the evidence-based practices are adopted (Hughes, 2008). The social systemconsidered in the text comprises of the mental health patients, the health care providers,and other stakeholders in the implementation. The incorporation of the social system inthe implementation process helps to provide audit and feedback, performance assessment,and testing the evidence-based practices. The methods of assessment have been shown tohave a positive effect on the change of practice behavior for the providers. The 11Best Practices in Mental Health Nursing involvement of the social system helps in discussing the findings during a practicechange. The method is essential in assisting the staff to know how the efforts ofenhancing care and patient outcomes progress in the implementation process. There lacksvivid evidence on the provision of audit and feedback, but it is likely that their effects canbe effective. Factors hindering the implementation of the evidence-based practice The use of evidence-based practice in mental health nursing is hindered by certainfactors that include limited time, lack of appropriate skills in searching and managing theresearch evidence, age, and the self-reported barriers. The factors make it challenging toutilize the evidence-based practices in the risk assessment and management of mentalhealth services.Lack of timeA majority of the mental health care providers cite the lack of time as a majorreason for the failure of implementing the best practices in mental health nursing. Thereis inadequate working staff that compromises the quality of the services they offer. Nurseshortage in many health sectors is an underlying problem that limits the potential of thecare providers in meeting their practice expectations (Boswell & Cannon, 2014). As such,they cannot implement the best practices when dealing with the mentally ill patients asrequired in their profession. 12Best Practices in Mental Health Nursing Lack of appropriate skills to search and manage the research evidenceThe research evidence obtained from the evidence-based studies requires beingimplemented as best practices in the provision of mental health services. The researchprocess requires expertise and thorough knowledge of all the activities involved (Aveyard& Sharp, 2013). Some of the care providers have limited research skills and hence cannotmanage the obtained evidence as required to the benefit of their practice. As such, muchof the gathered evidence is not put to practice by the care providers as expected.The age and number of years in nursing practice Age is a determinate factor in the effectiveness of utilizing the evidence-basedpractices. The different sources of information on the evidence-based practice may not beappropriate for all the care providers that hinder them from implementing it in practice(Grol & Wensing, 2004). The duration spent in the nursing practice influences the use ofthe sources of knowledge due to the diversity in type and generation differences. Some ofthe knowledge sources used at present were not available in the past years making itdifficult to be fully utilized by the older generations in care delivery. The challenges inimplementing the best practices can be addressed through purposive training. "