Aim: The aim was to describe the ways that nursing staff in psychiatric inpatient care understand nursing. Background: Nursing in psychiatric care is marginalized with ambiguous role definitions and imperceptible activities. Nurse managers' capabilities to establish a direction and shared vision are crucial to motivate nursing staff to take part in practice development. However, before establishing a shared vision it is important to identify the different ways nursing can be understood. Methods: Sixteen individual semi-structured interviews with nursing staff members were analysed using a phenomenographic approach. Results: Five ways of understanding nursing were identified. These understandings were interrelated based on the way that the patient, nursing interventions and the goal of nursing were understood. Conclusion: The diversity of identified understandings illuminates the challenges of creating a shared vision of roles, values and goals for nursing. Implications for Nursing Management: Awareness of staff members' different understandings of nursing can help nurse managers to establish a shared vision. To be useful, a shared vision has to be implemented together with clear role definitions, professional autonomy of nurses and support for professional development. Implementation of such measures serves as a foundation to make nursing visible and thereby enhance the quality of patient care.
CITATION STYLE
Salberg, J., Bäckström, J., Röing, M., & Öster, C. (2019). Ways of understanding nursing in psychiatric inpatient care – A phenomenographic study. Journal of Nursing Management, 27(8), 1826–1834. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12882
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