Nurses’ personal statements about factors that influence their decisions about the time they spend with residents with long‐term mental illness living in psychiatric group dwellings

One seldom‐discussed issue is the factors that influence nurses’ decisions about the time they spend with residents in psychiatric care. This study uses a qualitative naturalistic approach and consists of an analysis of focus‐group interviews with nurses, which aimed to identify factors affecting nurses’ decisions about being with or being nonattendant in their relationship with their residents. Two series of focus‐group interviews were conducted, interpreted and analysed through content analysis. The study included all the staff (n = 32) at two municipal psychiatric group dwellings housing residents mainly with a diagnosis of long‐term schizophrenia. This study revealed that the main factor that determined nurses’ nurse/resident time together or nonattendance time was whether they liked or disliked the individual resident. One possible explanation is the carers’ change from a perspective in which the nursing care was given on the basis of each resident's needs and rights, based on the individual nurse's professional judgement, to a consumer perspective, which leads to a change in responsibility from themselves to the individual residents.