Quality of interactions influences everyday life in psychiatric inpatient care—patients’ perspectives

Everyday life consists of daily activities that are taken for granted. It forms the foundation for human efforts and contains elements of both comfort and boredom. Because everyday life escapes no one, life in a psychiatric ward will become ordinary while staying there. This study aims to explore everyday life in psychiatric inpatient care based on patients’ experiences. We individually interviewed 16 participants with experiences of psychiatric inpatient care and analysed the data in accordance with the methods of grounded theory. Data collection and analysis continued in parallel in accordance with the method. Our results showed that everyday life is linked to the core category quality of interactions influences everyday life, and three constructed categories—staff makes the difference, looking for shelter in a stigmatizing environment, and facing a confusing care content—were related to the core category. Our results highlight the importance of ordinary relationships between staff and patients in psychiatric inpatient care. These results can be used to develop nursing interventions to improve psychiatric inpatient care and might also be used as a basis for reflective dialogues among staff.