"Being good or evil": Applying a common staff approach when caring for patients with psychiatric disease

Abstract

This study was performed to gain a deeper understanding of how psychiatric staff, when caring for patients with psychiatric disease, experience situations that include a common staff approach directed toward an individual client. Nine nurses were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed with a phenomenological-hermeneutic method in order to illuminate the lived experience of applying a common staff approach. The results revealed several meanings: Shedding light on carers' mutual relationships; being deserted by nurse colleagues; being aware of one's own basis of evaluation, and that of others; being judged by the patient as good or evil; and becoming sensitive to the patient's suffering. The comprehensive understanding was that the nurse has a difficult choice-to focus on relations with one's colleagues or to focus on the situation of the patient, who seems to suffer when a common staff approach is used.