Abstract
D.Cur.
Lifecare, like any other corporate business, in the current environment, has to
change all the time. Companies need new customers, innovative products,
expanded market and cutting edge technologies. The Company has the potential
to shape the behaviour, reinforce common beliefs, and encourage members to
apply their efforts to accomplish important Company objectives of providing care
for chronic mentally ill patients. The psychiatric nurses are therefore an essential
requirement for the success of the Company in a competitive environment.
On the other side, psychiatric nurses face the difficult task of confronting the
challenges involved in the nature of care required among chronic psychiatric
patients. Whilst striving for quality patient care, they find themselves faced with
some breakdowns within the environment in which they are interacting, resulting
in their resorting to negative media publicity. This type of publicity can lead to
damaging the Company’s reputation and can retard the Company’s growth
strategy, which the psychiatric nurses might not seem to understand. There was
also high staff turnover which hampered quality patient care. This could also
affect the Company in terms of what affects the competitiveness of the quality
care which the Company aims to deliver.
The researcher believes that for clinical care to take place, psychiatric nurses
need to be in sound mental health and understand the dynamics within the
Company in order to deal with it in an effective way. The following research
questions posed were addressed in this research:
• What are the psychiatric nurses’ experiences whilst being employed by the
Company?
• In what way can the formulation of the model be of assistance in the
promotion of the psychiatric nurses’ mental health as an integral part of
health?
The research objectives were:
• To explore and describe the experiences of the psychiatric nurses whilst
employed by Lifecare.• To use the results to generate the concepts for the model that would serve
as a framework for the psychiatric nursing specialist to facilitate the
implementation of guidelines that would assist the psychiatric nurses to be
in a sound mental state.
• To describe the guidelines that would serve as a framework for
operationalising the model in nursing education, psychiatric nursing
practice and nursing research.
Methods to ensure trustworthiness were ensured throughout this research.
Ethical consideration as outlined in the Position Statements published by the
Democratic Nursing Association of South Africa (1998: 2-21), was adopted.
The researcher utilized the assumptions of the Theory for Health Promotion in
Nursing in this research. This theory focuses on the whole person, that is, the
mind, body and spirit as well as on the parameters of nursing and the beliefs
about the person, health, illness and nursing. The emphasis in this theory is
on mental health promotion of the psychiatric nurses within the Company.
This research consisted of three stages as follows:
In stage one a qualitative design was used to explore and describe the
psychiatric nurses’ inner world experiences of the Company’s culture. Indepth
semi-structured interviews were utilized to obtain data from these
psychiatric nurses. These interviews were conducted by an independent
interviewer, and were audio-taped. These were transcribed and were
analysed by the researcher. Tesch (1990) in Cresswell (1994: 154) outlined
eight steps, which are referred to as decontextualisation and contextualisation,
which were adopted in analyzing the results. A description of the results was
given. This was followed by literature control which highlighted the similarities
to and contributions to this research. Themes that emerged highlighted the
experiences that the psychiatric nurses had of the Company culture which
affected their mental health.
In stage two the research design and theory generation was employed to
formulate a model which could be used in nursing education, nursing research
and nursing practice. The model formulated was based on the resultsobtained on the inner world experiences of psychiatric nurses. A combination
of stages of theory generation by Chinn and Kramer (1991:79-104) and
Dickoff, James and Wiedenbach (1968: 431-434) were employed by the
researcher to identify the central concepts that guided the identification of the
main theme. A tentative model was formulated and was submitted to the
independent experts for consultations and clarification. The model was named
and presented in its final form to the independent experts.
In stage three the researcher formulated the guidelines for operationalising the
implementation of the model in clinical practice, nursing education and
recommendations were made for further research.