Patients’ experiences of being helped in an inpatient setting

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe patients' experiences of being helped during a period of psychiatric hospital care. Psychosis has traditionally been defined in medical and psychological terminology. The focus of psychiatric nursing is the human experience of distress associated with mental illness. The aim of psychiatric care is to promote healing and coping in daily life through support, validation and understanding. The main aim is to re-empower the patient with psychosis by using psychiatric care. The purposive sample consisted of interviews with nine voluntary patients recovering from psychosis. The interviewees told about their experiences of care. The verbatim transcripts were analysed using Giorgi's phenomenological method. Patients experienced care as helpful but unstructured: care facilitated their situation by alleviating the disorders, but it had not been defined by nurses, and the patients made their own conclusions about what care should be like. The care did not reach the inner world of the patients with psychosis. From the patients' point of view, care should protect them from vulnerability and empower/restructure their selves for coping in daily life.

The process of implementing a new working method - a project towards change in a Swedish psychiatric clinic

“…Another quality of the DLDA tool was that patients seemed to appreciate having structured dialogues with the nursing staff. This is also consistent with the results of Koivistos et al's study, which showed that patients who had recovered from a psychosis often experienced interactions with nursing staff as unorganized, resulting in patients not being able to predict or understand the purpose of dialogues [71] .…”

What is psychosis? A meta-synthesis of inductive qualitative studies exploring the experience of psychosis

“…Hospitals may also be feared (Koivisto et al, 2004), with some participants using "imagery about imprisonment and torture" (Thornhill et al, 2004, p. 188). Participants often lose jobs as a result of psychosis (Gee et al, 2003;Woodside et al, 2008), with symptoms being too severe for them to carry on working (Nithsdale et al, 2008;Sung et al, 2006).…”

“…Sources of hope include the support of family and friends (Wagner & King, 2004;Perry et al, 2007), friendships enduring with old friends (Schon et al, 2009), medication (Usher, 2001), positive attitudes from clinicians and confidence about recovery (Green et al, 2008), Meta-synthesis of qualitative studies of psychosis 13 being diagnosed (Dilks et al, 2010), the prospect of work or education (Usher, 2001;Perry et al, 2007;Liu et al, 2007), religion/spirituality (Humberstone, 2002;Drinnan & Lavender, 2006;McCann & Clark, 2004;Wagner & King, 2003), and understanding and/or meeting other people going through the same thing (Coffey et al, 2008;Powell et al, 2006;Newton et al, 2007;Schon et al, 2009). Patients hope for restoration of family relationships, close interpersonal relationships, employment, energy, health, spiritual fulfillment or just a 'normal' life (Chernomas et al, 2000;Koivisto et al, 2004;Gould, 2005;Noh et al, 2000).…”

“…2 Regaining a sense of peaceful safety in the world is also central to recovery (Campbell & Morrison, 2007), both on wards (Koivisto et al, 2004) and at home ). Yet, stress may also be found invigorating (Roe et al, 2004).…”

Brukerperspektiv i norsk forskning om innlagte psykiatriske pasienter. En litteraturgjennomgang

“…Av tre aktuelle studier (37,38,39) i Finland vil vi kort utdype Kuosmanens, Hätönens, Malkavaaras, Kylmäs og Välimäkis (2007) studie «Deprivation of liberty in psychiatric hospital: The patient`s perspective» (38). Studien ble gjennomført på to akuttavdelinger på et psykiatrisk sykehus, der siktemålet var å benytte pasienterfaringer som grunnlag for å utvikle kunnskap om tvang og frihetsberøvelse.…”