Ways of understanding nursing in psychiatric inpatient care - A phenomenographic study

The aim was to describe the ways that nursing staff in psychiatric inpatient care understand nursing.

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.

Sixteen individual semi-structured interviews with nursing staff members were analysed using a phenomenographic approach.

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.

The diversity of identified understandings illuminates the challenges of creating a shared vision of roles, values and goals for nursing.

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.