Mental Health Nurses' Experience of Trauma: A Qualitative Descriptive Study

Mental health nurses can experience trauma in their personal and work lives; however there is no prior qualitative research describing these experiences.

Describe mental health nurses' experience of potentially traumatic events in their personal and professional lives.

Qualitative descriptive study of mental health nurses describing traumatic events in a survey. Content analysis conducted using Foli's trauma framework.

Eighty-two mental health nurses described potentially traumatic events. Most (65%) were personal events, including deaths and suicides of family members, domestic and family violence, and adverse childhood experiences. Workplace events included violence, consumer and colleague deaths, second-victim trauma, and trauma from insufficient workplace resources.

Due to their trauma experiences, nurses are at risk of poorer psychological health and re-traumatisation through their work.

Findings are limited to one group of mental health nurses in one setting.

Organisations need to place nurses and other staff at the centre of approaches for addressing trauma, and support nurses' trauma-informed self-care.

Organisations have a duty of care to staff. Organisation-wide trauma-informed approaches in mental health services are recommended, that are staff-centred as well as consumer-centred. Continued efforts to reduce avoidable sources of trauma at work, such as violence and lack of workplace resources, are needed.