Rationale behind choosing the topic
Nurses working in a psychiatric department often face various challenges which are rarely faced by nurses of other wards. This is said so because nurses of the psychiatric department often face higher risks of experiencing violence at their workplace which are mainly initiated by the mentally-ill aggressive patients (Hung et al. 2014). Research works conducted by eminent researchers on this topic are very few and they do not successfully help in recognizing the different types of aggression faced by nurses, the steps taken by the nurses and the interventions which should be taken so that nurses gets less exposed to different violence. Present report will depict a proper topic for research in this field, explain the rationale, describe the socio-political context and describe the correct approach for the research. The main topic of research would be the perceptions of the nurses of the psychiatric department about the work pressure they experience while handling aggressive patients, the outcomes of such pressures and how they try to overcome them. It would also cover the recommendations suggested by nurses which would help the employer as well as the nurses to overcome such challenges properly.
It has been reported that almost one third of nurses working in psychiatric departments have reported physical assault by a patient in last 12 months with about a little less than half the number of nurses in the ward experiencing emotional abuse. It has been seen that, within the population of psychiatric nurses, more than 50% are victims of different types of emotional as well as verbal abuse (Arnetz et al. 2015). Nurses, also sometimes go through different types of sexual abuse and assaults with a larger portion reporting physical abuse. They are found to report of the highest violence victimization rates among all types of nurses (Gabrovec and Lobnikar 2015). Work pressures developed due to such stress often increase turnover rates as well as emotional and physical turmoil affecting quality lives (Lee et al. 2015).
Often, if one conducts a social analysis of the effects of the violence of the patients on the nurses, one can see that different physical as well as psychological impacts are occurring among the nurses which are creating pressures on them (Teymourzadeh et al. 2014). Different types of emotional stress accumulate among the nurses, which severely affect their physical and mental strength to handle different patients effectively and prevent them from providing correct care plan for them. Often psychological consequences noted among the nurses include fear, anger, post traumatic disorders, guilt, self blame, shame and many others (Gabrovec and Lobnikar 2015). All these consequences are seen to ultimately develop a stress and pressure on the nurses in most of the cases. As a result, it becomes extremely important to know how such consequences are affecting the nurses’ health and alter the quality of lives of the nurses. It is also important to understand, how they perceive such stress and pressure and how they try to envision them. It is not known how they try to copy with the stress or what results occur when they fail to handle such pressure (Neuman and Robson 2014). Often violence of the patients results in physical harm and injuries resulting in temporary as well as permanent disability (Dehgan et al. 2017). Therefore, our research topic would be how the nurses of the psychiatric department perceive the work pressure that develops when managing the aggression and violence of psychiatric patients. They would also cover nurses’ perceptions of the outcomes and how they try to cope with them. It would also include different types of recommendations that they suggest for themselves as well as for the organization to reduce the incidences of work stress and pressure (Baby, Glue and Carlyle 2014).
Influence by the socio-politcal contexts of the workplace, benefits, and suffering of the stakeholders
Nurses of every departments have to follow certain codes of conducts, codes of ethics and well as professional standards of nursing in order to assure the patients, their families and the healthcare organisation that the intervention and care provided are evidence based (Hung et al. 2014). Nurses have to follow the principles of dignity, beneficence, non maleficence as well as justice in order to provide the best care. However, while maintaining autonomy and dignity of a patients, nurses face ethical dilemma as the expectations of the patients clash with the best care or beneficence practiced by the nurses. Therefore, it often becomes difficult for nurses to tackle such situation effectively (Teymourzadeh et al. 2014).Often, patients become rude and violent with the nurses without any mistake from the part of the nurses. However, they have very little scopes of complain to anyone as it becomes their duty to tackle the entire situation with their critical analysing power and ability to handle situations empathetically but effectively. Often many healthcare policies see psychiatric patients as human beings with chronic disorder and therefore they are not included within any strict legal laws against themselves. So in this case we see that such patients gain the benefits in the system where they repeatedly perform such violent and aggressive activities for the sake of their mental conditions (Arnetz et al. 2015). However, the nurses are the one who are the sufferers here as the organisation policies and different principles of nursing have left them with little scopes to handle such situation, without feeling stressed or pressurised (Neuman and Robson 2014). So, in this case, they are the sufferers. It is indeed very much important for the organisations as well as the nursing federations of Australia to look over the work pressures developed due to these among the nurses and bring out rules and regulations which the nurses would follow to handle such situations effectively.
Two types of approaches can be used to handle the research effectively. The first approach that can be used is the quantitative approach. Quantitative researches help to quantify the problem by different ways by generating different numerical data. It helps researchers by quantifying opinions, attitudes, behaviors and defined variables. It can be conducted by setting up survey with the help of close ended questionnaires which will help in depicting the percentage of nurses being affected by work pressure, percentage of nurses stressing on different outcomes, and others (Punch 2013). However, this process will not be helpful as much as the qualitative approach as the main goal would be to develop ideas about the perceptions of the nurse’s regarding work pressures and how they handle the outcomes (Neuman and Robson 2014). Usually, qualitative researches help in uncovering trends in opinions as well as thoughts. It also helps to dive much deeper into the problems faced by the participants. The data collection method mainly bases on individual interviews, group discussions or participation and observation. In this scenario, it will also help to know about the different recommendations they are making on their present day conditions. The former process will not help to get a clear idea about the perceptions and recommendations of the nurses as it will restrict the views of the nurses to certain questions fixed by the researchers and they will not be able to open their hearts out while describing their perceptions. Moreover, recommendations suggested by nurses would not be properly depicted in case of quantitative researches as what the nurses think about recommendations would never be known by the researchers beforehand of setting close ended questionnaires. Quantitative researches are more effective when efficiency of interventions needs to be tested (Hussein 2015). However, unless the interventions and the recommendations are known, such test becomes a failure. Hence qualitative approach would be the best.
Conclusion:
Knowing about the perceptions of the nurses, about their work pressures, while handling aggressive patients, will help in understanding how they cope up with the situations. Knowing what they think about recommendations to overcome such situations will help the organization as well as researcher to develop proper interventions and strategies that will protect them for such work pressures. Work pressures often increase turnover rates and emotional and physical turmoil and so their perceptions would help to overcome such crisis situations and create a stable working environment in psychiatric departments.
References:
Arnetz, J.E., Hamblin, L., Essenmacher, L., Upfal, M.J., Ager, J. and Luborsky, M., 2015. Understanding patient?to?worker violence in hospitals: a qualitative analysis of documented incident reports. Journal of advanced nursing, 71(2), pp.338-348.
Baby, M., Glue, P. and Carlyle, D., 2014. ‘Violence is not part of our job’: a thematic analysis of psychiatric mental health nurses’ experiences of patient assaults from a New Zealand perspective. Issues in mental health nursing, 35(9), pp.647-655.
Dehghan-Chaloshtari, S. and Ghodousi, A., 2017. Factors and Characteristics of Workplace Violence Against Nurses: A Study in Iran. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, p.0886260516683175.
Gabrovec, B. and Lobnikar, B., 2015. The analysis of the role of an institution in providing safety and quality in psychiatric health care. Anadolu Psikiyatr De, 16, pp.420-5.
Hung, B.J., Huang, X.Y., Cheng, J.F., Wei, S.J. and Lin, M.J., 2014. The working experiences of novice psychiatric nurses in Taiwanese culture: a phenomenological study. Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing, 21(6), pp.536-543.
Hussein, A., 2015. The use of triangulation in social sciences research: Can qualitative and quantitative methods be combined?. Journal of Comparative Social Work, 4(1).
Kontio, R., Anttila, M., Lantta, T., Kauppi, K., Joffe, G. and Välimäki, M., 2014. Toward a Safer Working Environment on Psychiatric Wards: Service Users’ Delayed Perspectives of Aggression and Violence?Related Situations and Development Ideas. Perspectives in psychiatric care, 50(4), pp.271-279.
Lee, J., Daffern, M., Ogloff, J.R. and Martin, T., 2015. Towards a model for understanding the development of post?traumatic stress and general distress in mental health nurses. International journal of mental health nursing, 24(1), pp.49-58.
Neuman, W.L. and Robson, K., 2014. Basics of social research. Pearson Canada.
Punch, K.F., 2013. Introduction to social research: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. Sage.
Teymourzadeh, E., Rashidian, A., Arab, M., Akbari-Sari, A. and Hakimzadeh, S.M., 2014. Nurses exposure to workplace violence in a large teaching hospital in Iran. International journal of health policy and management, 3(6), p.301.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
