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Nurses with mental illness: Their workplace experiences
Author(s) -
Joyce Terry,
Hazelton Michael,
McMillan Margaret
Publication year - 2007
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/j.1447-0349.2007.00492.x
Subject(s) - mental illness , nursing , qualitative research , psychology , medicine , nursing staff , theme (computing) , mental health , psychiatry , social science , sociology , computer science , operating system
This qualitative study explored the workplace experiences of nurses who have a mental illness. The ultimate goal of the study was to gain insights that would lead to the development of more supportive environments for these nurses. Interviews were conducted with 29 nurses in New South Wales, Australia. The interview transcripts were subjected to discourse analysis. One significant finding was the theme ‘Crossing the boundary – from nurse to patient’. This encompassed three sub‐themes: ‘Developing a mental illness’, ‘Hospital admission’, and ‘Being managed’. For most of the participants, being a nurse with a mental illness was largely a negative experience. Often, nurses without a mental illness actively sought to reform the participants' behaviour to enforce what was seen as appropriate conduct for a professional nurse. This paper shows how nurses in this study dealt with the early concerns associated with mental illness.