Empowerment in the interpersonal field: discourses of acute mental health nurses

Social policy greatly influences the working environment of mental health nurses but in practice can be difficult to translate. Empowerment of service users is one area that is constantly significant in policy, locally and nationally, yet quite difficult to define in practice. This ethnomethodological study explored the practice of 10 mental health nurses working in an acute admissions unit. Through semi-structured interviews, the nurses were asked to discuss the taken-for-granted methods of empowerment with individual service users, their families and with work colleagues. The results were thematically analysed and compared with international findings, which reflected an awareness among mental health nurses of empowering practice in four areas. These were: Working with mental illness, Making connections, Responsibility and Teamworking.