Everyday life consists of daily activities that are taken for granted. It forms the foundation for human efforts and contains elements of both comfort and boredom. Because everyday life escapes no one, life in a psychiatric ward will become ordinary while staying there. This study aims to explore everyday life in psychiatric inpatient care based on patients’ experiences. We individually interviewed 16 participants with experiences of psychiatric inpatient care and analysed the data in accordance with the methods of grounded theory. Data collection and analysis continued in parallel in accordance with the method. Our results showed that everyday life is linked to the core category quality of interactions influences everyday life, and three constructed categories—staff makes the difference, looking for shelter in a stigmatizing environment, and facing a confusing care content—were related to the core category. Our results highlight the importance of ordinary relationships between staff and patients in psychiatric inpatient care. These results can be used to develop nursing interventions to improve psychiatric inpatient care and might also be used as a basis for reflective dialogues among staff.

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Introduction Patients and ward staff describe psychiatric inpatient care as demanding, characterized by unpredictable events, yet research on interprofessional teams perspectives of everyday life processes in psychiatric inpatient care lacks. Aim This study aims to explore everyday life processes in psychiatric inpatient care, as reported by staff in interprofessional teams. Method A grounded theory design was used and 36 participants were interviewed. Results The analysis resulted in a process-oriented core category From ideals to resignation. Related to this core category were three further categories: Knowing where to go, Walking a path of obstacles and Shifting focus from the patient's best interests to self-survival. The staff had ideals about care and collaboration, but a poor environment, power asymmetry, lacking structure and demands of managing chaos meant that they appeared to resign from putting their ideals into practice. Discussion Different professions in general describe the same obstacles in everyday life on the wards but there are also profession-specific perspectives on distancing and feelings of abandonment. To our knowledge similar findings have not been reported in the international evidence. Implications In order to support interprofessional teams to work according to their ideals, interventions such as Protected Engagement Time and reflective dialogues within the teams are suggested.

The environment in psychiatric inpatient care is key to patient recovery and staff job satisfaction. In this qualitative study of patient and staff experiences of a new spatial design in psychiatric inpatient care, we analysed data from 11 semi-structured interviews with patients and five focus group discussions with staff using qualitative content analysis. The new design contributed to feelings of safety and recovery, but patients and staff also reported some frustration and added stress. The results lead us to conclude that while the new spatial design improves some conditions for recovery and job satisfaction, the design itself is simply not enough. Changes in care environments require that both patients and staff be informed and involved in the renovation to ensure that patients feel respected and staff feel confident in using the new environment before and during treatment and follow-ups.

The facilitation of quality time between patients and staff in psychiatric inpatient care is useful to promote recovery and reduce stress experienced by staff. However, interventions are reported to be complex to implement and are poorly described in the literature. This multisite study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and effects of the nursing intervention Time Together, using mixed methods. Data consisted of notes from participant observations and logs to evaluate feasibility, and questionnaires to evaluate effects. The primary outcome for patients was quality of interactions, and for staff, it was perceived stress. The secondary outcome for patients was anxiety and depression symptom levels, and for staff, it was stress of conscience. Data were analysed using visual analysis, percentage of nonoverlapping data, and qualitative content analysis. The results showed that Time Together was a feasible intervention, but measurements showed no effects on the two patient outcomes: quality of interactions and anxiety and depressive symptoms and, questionable effects on perceived stress and stress of conscience among staff. Shared responsibility, a friendly approach, and a predictable structure enabled Time Together, while a distant approach and an unpredictable structure hindered the intervention. In conclusion, the intervention proved to be feasible with potential to enable quality interactions between patients and staff using the enabling factors as supportive components. It also had some effects on perceived stress and stress of conscience among staff. Further evaluation is needed to build on the evidence for the intervention.