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Releasing the therapeutic potential of the psychiatric nurse: a human relations perspective of the nurse–patient relationship
Author(s) -
CAMERON D.,
KAPUR R.,
CAMPBELL P.
Publication year - 2005
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 - 10.1111/j.1365-2850.2004.00796.x
Subject(s) - therapeutic relationship , perspective (graphical) , nurse–client relationship , active listening , mental health , nursing , mental illness , medicine , psychology , identity (music) , psychotherapist , physics , artificial intelligence , computer science , acoustics
In psychiatry mental health nurses form the largest professional discipline providing care on an everyday basis for sustained periods. Mental health nurses therefore are in a pivotal position to establish valued therapeutic alliances. In practice, however, a disproportionate amount of nursing time is taken up by administration, time spent talking to patients is minimal and when interactions do occur they remain notionally therapeutic and often are not theoretically informed. This noted paucity of therapeutic contact is antithetical to the aspirations of service users who increasingly are asking for a more skilled approach to the talking–listening that occurs in the therapeutic encounter. It is hypothesized by the present authors that an object‐relations perspective of the nurse–patient relationship could release the largely untapped therapeutic potential of the psychiatric nurse by (1) bridging the gap between theory and practice and (2) providing a professional identity from within which nurses can begin to ‘get to know’ and understand the predicament of the patient with severe mental illness.