Nurses' experiences of hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients in the psychiatric ward of a general hospital
Chimedza, Isaac
The purpose of this qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual study was to
explore and describe nurses’ experiences of hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients in the
psychiatric ward of a general hospital and to propose recommendations to the hospital management to
support nurses who experienced hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients. Purposive sampling was
used to identify the twelve nurses who participated in this study. Data were collected through
in-depth face-to-face interviews, drawings and field notes. The data were analysed using Tesch’s
descriptive method of open coding and the findings revealed that nurses experienced verbal abuse,
physical abuse and sexual harassment from mentally ill patients, and had varied negative and
positive responses to these forms of hostile behaviour. Main challenges were identified and
recommendations were made to the hospital management to support nurses who
experience hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients.
↧