Common experiences of mental health nurses and consumers: ingredients of a symbiotic relationship?

Validity and reliability study of the Turkish psychiatric nurses of job motivation scale

This methodological study was planned to explore the validity and reliability of the evaluation scale for measuring the job motivation of nurses who work in psychiatric clinics. The sample was composed of 378 nurses who work in all psychiatric units or psychiatric hospitals located in Turkey's four large cities - Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and Manisa. For testing reliability of 'job motivation scale', the internal consistency tests were executed with split scale analysis, Cronbach's alpha coefficient and item-total score correlation. For construct validity, factor analysis was used. For the first part of scale, Cronbach's alpha was determined to be 0.79. For the second part, Cronbach's alpha was 0.72. Factor analysis was performed in an attempt to establish validity and underlying associations between items in the scale. The first analysis produced nine eigenvalues (>1) and nine factors were extracted. The scree test indicated that a two-factor model would be suitable. The factor structure of the tool for measuring the job motivation of nurses who work in psychiatric clinics was parallel with motivation concepts. Validity and reliability levels of the scale for measuring the job motivation of nurses who work in psychiatric clinics were found to be sufficient in the Turkish population.

The recovery alliance theory of mental health nursing

The recovery alliance theory (RAT) is a mid-range theory of mental health nursing based on humanistic philosophy. The conception of the RAT was the outcome of collaboration among service users, practising mental health nurses, educationalists and managers and was developed in the context of a number of political and social changes as well as changes in the mental health field. The theory is composed of six constructs: humanistic philosophy, recovery, partnership relation, strengths focus, empowerment and common humanity. The derivation of three concepts from these constructs, namely coping, self-responsibility/control and working alliance, forms the basis for the translation of the constructs into a system of mental health nursing practice [Partnership in Coping system (PinC)]. The constructs underpinning the RAT were clearly demonstrated in a preliminary trial of the PinC system.

Psychiatric nurses' attitudes towards identified inpatients as measured by the semantic differential technique

Nursing care can figuratively be described as a gift that is given by the nurse in the nurse-patient relationship where attitudes play an important role for the gift's appearance. Sometimes patients are unwilling to or incapable of accepting the gift and this can lead to situations in which nurses are not able to handle their situation in a professional manner. This research survey aimed to investigate nurses' attitudes and find a structure in nurses' attitudes towards their patients. Six psychiatric group dwellings and six acute psychiatric hospital wards participated in the study. In all, 2700 assessments of 163 patients were sent out to 160 respondents and 2436 answers were returned. The semantic differential technique was used. The scale has 57 bipolar pairs of adjective, which estimate an unknown number of dimensions of nurses' attitudes towards an identified patient. The respondents' answers were analysed through factor analysis rotated using the Varimax method and etropy-based measures of association combined with structural plots were also used. Both the factor analysis and the entropy revealed three factors, which were interpreted as being of evaluative type. Factor 1 was interpreted as describing nurses' answers mainly as a combination of an ethical and aesthetic evaluation of the patients. Factor 2 was interpreted as being of an empathetic type and factor 3 as nurses' experiences of the patients' cognitive capacity. The study indicates that the dominant aspect of nurses' attitudes in a psychiatric context is the ethical/aesthetic dimension, which is an important finding for the understanding of nurses' attitudes and actions towards their patients.