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Power and control: forensic community mental health nurses’ perceptions of team‐working, legal sanction and compliance
Author(s) -
Coffey Michael,
Jenkins Emrys
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.69
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1365-2850
pISSN - 1351-0126
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2850.2002.00490.x
Subject(s) - compliance (psychology) , mental health , perception , psychology , power (physics) , nursing , control (management) , recall , community hospital , mental health act , medicine , social psychology , psychiatry , physics , management , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , economics , cognitive psychology
This is the second of two papers reporting on a descriptive mixed methods study of community forensic mental health nurses’ experiences of restriction orders and supervised discharge mechanisms. Forensic community mental health nurses (FCMHNs) have a body of experience of working with mentally disordered offenders in the community. A number of these patients will be subject to conditions on discharge. This in effect acts as compulsory community treatment with the sanction of recall to hospital. This paper examines nurses’ perceptions of team‐working, legal powers and their effects upon compliance. Findings include that FCMHNs express general satisfaction with their input to decision‐making but some concerns were raised that challenge the ethic of team‐working. Respondents were broadly in favour of increased professional responsibility, although this may be related to a quest for status. A pragmatic if equivocal support for the use of compulsion in community mental healthcare was also expressed.