A Place to be Yourself: Empowerment from the Client's Perspective

Abstract

This article describes a focused ethnography of a group of chronically mentally ill clients who were involved in a client-run drop-in center. Spradley's (1979) Developmental Research Sequence guided the research. Data were obtained from interviews, participant-observation and documents review. The qualitative analysis identified the major theme of empowerment, which had four process domains: participating, choosing, supporting and negotiating. These domains represented four levels of empowerment for this group. From the client's perspective, empowerment meant they participated more in the community, their choices were increased, they provided support for each other and they negotiated on a more equal basis with staff. A fifth domain, personal significance, described the effects of empowerment for each individual.

Power imbalance between nurses and patients: a potential inhibitor of partnership in care

“…(1991) support Cahill by explaining that patients are experts on their own lives and that the role of health professionals is to provide information and support, and to transfer leadership and decision‐making to patients. Connelly et al . (1993) report that by promoting empowerment nurses can facilitate patients to choose and negotiate about their own care, which in turn highlights the notion of partnership between the two parties.…”

Validity and reliability of the personnel version of the Family Empowerment Scale (FES) for the social, health and educational services in Finland

“…Empowerment has been defined as a process of enabling people to gain some measure of power in their own lives and improve their welfare (e.g. People can be supported in terms of their resources, strengths, responsibilities and the availability of options (Katz 1984, Gibson 1991, Connelly et al 1993, Jones & Meleis 1993, Koelen & Lindstr€ om 2005. An empowerment process can be supported although nobody can empower another.…”

Empowerment versus power: consumer participation in mental health services

“…Consumer participation contributes to the achievement of this goal as 'patients are encouraged to take positive steps to improve their situation instead of being passive recipients' (Shields et al, 1988). Consumers themselves have spoken about participation helping to keep them out of hospital and make them 'almost well' (Connelly et al, 1993). Logic, as well as literature, suggests that the collaborative approach in planning and implementation of intervention will directly affect its success (Mosey, 1986;Keck, 1990).…”