Abstract
M.Cur. (Nursing Sciences)
The facilitation of a therapeutic relationship is an essential skill in nursing, and particularly in mental health care. The emotional effects of illness and the increase in admission of patients with mental health challenges in private general hospitals has made the facilitation of a therapeutic relationship a vital component of modern healthcare. While working in a private general hospital, the researcher dealt with numerous incidents in which nurses displayed a lack of awareness and misunderstanding during interactions with patients.
The objectives of this study were: to explore and describe nurses’ perceptions of facilitating a therapeutic relationship; to examine differences in nurses’ perceptions of facilitating a therapeutic relationship by comparing various categories of nurses; and to propose recommendations concerning the facilitation of a therapeutic relationship.
A quantitative, descriptive, contextual and deductive design was followed in the study. Categories of nurses and care workers from three private general hospitals in Gauteng were involved. Self-administered questionnaires (n=184) were used for nurses and care workers to rate their perceptions of facilitation in relation to the dimensions of a therapeutic relationship namely: empathy, positive regard, genuineness, concreteness and self-exploration. Specific hypotheses were tested to identify whether statistically significant and substantial differences existed between the perceptions of two or more groups of nurses.
The results indicated that the mean scores on the deeper reflective levels of facilitation of a therapeutic relationship were lower than expected. Nurses in the caring profession should have an awareness of a therapeutic relationship; however, the majority of nurse-participants rated their perceptions of facilitation to a lower level than the researcher expected. The lower levels showed lack of concern for the patient’s feelings, were superficial or neither hindered nor facilitated a nurse-patient therapeutic relationship.
The higher mean scores obtained on responses pertaining to general nursing tasks demonstrated that nurses were more aware of the patient’s physical needs. This result was not surprising when considering that there seems to be non-therapeutic environment and medical model of care in private general hospitals.