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The work of community psychiatric nursing *
Author(s) -
Pollock Linda C.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
journal of advanced nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.948
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1365-2648
pISSN - 0309-2402
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2648.1988.tb01446.x
Subject(s) - nursing , work (physics) , bureaucracy , service (business) , face (sociological concept) , medicine , psychology , sociology , business , political science , engineering , mechanical engineering , social science , marketing , politics , law
The findings of this study provide an explanation of how community psychiatric nurses make community psychiatric nursing work. The work of community psychiatric nursing can be usefully compared to that involved in making a theatre production. In the theatre there is a play with a plot which is conveyed through the parts played by characters. In the face of production limitations (size of theatre, costs and time constraints, for example) and the demands of sponsors, audience, theatre critics and others in the Company, the characters make use of the stage props and get the show on the road. The community psychiatric nurses can be likened to the characters in a play, whose title is ‘the provision of a community psychiatric nursing service’; the plot being the provision of individualized care. Similar to the production limitations in the theatre, the community psychiatric nurses have limited care options and resources and are faced with the varied demands of patients, carers and situations, other specialists and the bureaucracy. Yet the nurses have to produce the best match of needs to resources. Maintaining a theatrical analogy, the nurses have to use what props they have on the stage, not to ‘get the show on the road’, but to make the community psychiatric nursing service work. Unlike a theatrical production, however, community psychiatric nurses do not appear to have an overall director controlling the work; neither are there guidelines which limit or define practice. This results in individual community psychiatric nurses establishing their own modus operandi and defining their own work practices. Two major themes pervade this account of the work of community psychiatric nurses. Firstly, the nurses continually seek to legitimize their work and justify the care given. Secondly, they juggle resources. Both of these aspects of the work emerged because the nurses' expressed ideology of providing‘individualized’care (care tailored to the needs of individual patients and their carers) was impossible to sustain in the face of finite resources.