Ways of understanding nursing in psychiatric inpatient care – A phenomenographic study

AIM: The aim was to describe the ways that nursing staff in psychiatric inpatient care understand nursing. BACKGROUND: Nursing in psychiatric care is marginalized with ambiguous role definitions and imperceptible activities. Nurse managers' capabilities to establish a direction and shared vision are crucial to motivate nursing staff to take part in practice development. However, before establishing a shared vision it is important to identify the different ways nursing can be understood. METHODS: Sixteen individual semi‐structured interviews with nursing staff members were analysed using a phenomenographic approach. RESULTS: Five ways of understanding nursing were identified. These understandings were interrelated based on the way that the patient, nursing interventions and the goal of nursing were understood. CONCLUSION: The diversity of identified understandings illuminates the challenges of creating a shared vision of roles, values and goals for nursing. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Awareness of staff members' different understandings of nursing can help nurse managers to establish a shared vision. To be useful, a shared vision has to be implemented together with clear role definitions, professional autonomy of nurses and support for professional development. Implementation of such measures serves as a foundation to make nursing visible and thereby enhance the quality of patient care.