Mental health nurses’ emotions, exposure to patient aggression, attitudes to and use of coercive measures: Cross sectional questionnaire survey☆
Section snippets
What is already known about the topic?
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Mental health nurses’ attitudes to the use of restraint and seclusion are related to their approval of their use
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Anger is also thought to play a role in nurses’ responses to and management of aggression but its role is poorly understood
What this paper adds
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Mental health nurses who were more approving of restraint and seclusion also reported higher levels of anger, but were not more likely to be involved in these interventions
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Reported exposure to verbal aggression of a targeted, demeaning or humiliating nature was associated with greater anger provocation
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Nurses may require help to regulate their emotional responses to specific types of aggression
Participants and setting
The current study was one of a series of investigations into the role of anger and its constituent components in inpatient aggression, staff responses to and management of aggression, and staff-patient interpersonal relationships in a secure mental health inpatient setting. The present study was conducted in the medium and low-secure wards constituting the men’s and women’s adult mental disorder pathways at St Andrew’s Healthcare, a United Kingdom provider of specialist secure mental health
Results
In total, N = 68 qualified nurses (70.6% female) were recruited into the study. Participants were all ward-based nurses (see Table 1), some with additional managerial responsibilities (Ward Manager, Deputy Ward Manager). Most (n = 35; 51.5%) had more than five years’ experience and almost three quarters (73.6%) had more than two years’ experience.
Significant Shapiro-Wilk tests, kurtosis and skewness values, and examination of histogram plots, indicated that the Novaco Anger Scale – Provocation
Discussion
We aimed to explore relationships between mental health nurses’ emotions, most notably those related to anger, their attitudes to coercive management measures, and their exposure to various types of patient aggression. There are three main findings to report. First, exposure to a cluster of patient behaviours, identified as related through principal components analysis, including personal insults, name-calling, and discriminatory remarks that were perceived as having humiliating intent were
Conclusion
This study has found support for a positive relationship between nursing staff anger and exposure to patient aggression, specifically that which is perceived as personally valent. As well as research and clinical efforts focusing on reducing the risk of inpatient aggression, it should also consider the role of nurses within that and its impact on them as individuals, as a team and the ward atmosphere. The study has revealed associations between nursing staff emotion and attitude towards, and
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Cited by (0)
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This study was part of author RJs PhD funded by St Andrew’s Healthcare and the University of Northampton.
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Present address: Birmingham City University, Department of Psychology, Curzon Building, Birmingham, B4 7BD, UK.