Participation in change: self-reflection of staff in a psychiatric admission unit

This paper reports on a comprehensive nursing research and development project carried out in the psychiatric admission unit of The Mental Hospital, Keropudas, Finland. The purpose of the project was to plan, implement and evaluate the functioning of the ward in order to orient it more towards patient-centered practices. This study was an action research project, the methodological foundations of which were based on the action theory and dialectics. This article reports on the staff's written essays based on self-reflection concerning the orientation of action towards change. The essays were analyzed using the method of continuous comparison. This analysis yielded a conceptual outline of how the orientation of action towards change manifested itself in the internal regulation of the ward staff. The main category of data to result from selective coding was participation in change. Participation was enthusiastic, hesitant or withdrawn.