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The lived experience of community mental health nurses working with people who have dual diagnosis: a phenomenological study
Author(s) -
COOMBES L.,
WRATTEN A.
Publication year - 2007
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.1365-2850.2007.01094.x
Subject(s) - dual diagnosis , feeling , mental health , interpretative phenomenological analysis , lived experience , dual (grammatical number) , phenomenological method , hermeneutic phenomenology , medicine , psychology , nursing , psychiatry , qualitative research , psychotherapist , sociology , social psychology , social science , art , philosophy , literature , epistemology
Dual diagnosis (the combination of mental health and substance misuse problems) is a significant facing mental health nurses in the UK. The purpose of the study was to describe the lived experience of community mental health nurses working with people who have a dual diagnosis. A phenomenological approach was us and a purposive sample of seven community mental health nurses with experience of working with people with a dual diagnosis was selected. Data were collected through audiotaped, semi‐structured interviews lasting approximately 1 h in duration and analysed using Colaizzi's (1978) method. Thirteen theme clusters relating to three major themes were identified: (1) difficulties in understanding the concept of dual diagnosis; (2) feeling deskilled when working with people who have a dual diagnosis; (3) struggling to work in a system which seeks to avoid people with dual diagnosis. Recommendations regarding the need for increased joint working between professionals, improved education and further research are made.