Premium
Virtual communication about psychiatric intensive care units: Social actor representatives claim space on Twitter
Author(s) -
SalzmannErikson Martin
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
international journal of mental health nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.911
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1447-0349
pISSN - 1445-8330
DOI - 10.1111/inm.12253
Subject(s) - space (punctuation) , power (physics) , nursing , qualitative research , medicine , psychology , public relations , sociology , political science , computer science , social science , physics , quantum mechanics , operating system
Psychiatric intensive care units ( PICU ) provide care for those with the worst phases of mental illness. What defines a PICU is often decided locally at hospitals. The aim of the present study was to explore and describe a contemporary discourse on how PICU are socially constructed from virtual discussions. An explorative and descriptive study design was applied for this qualitative inquiry using discourse methodology. The data were collected in Twitter's search string and consists of 215 Twitter postings. A framework of social actor representatives that form the discourse was established and presented in three categories: (i) hospital and agencies communicating about PICU ; (ii) health‐care professionals communicating about PICU ; and (iii) service users and relatives communicating about PICU . Hospitals, agencies, and health‐care professionals hold great power and responsibility for informing the public about PICU . Transparent and informative tweets could turn the mystery of PICU into more specific, positive portrayals.