Becoming a Caring Mental Health Nurse:
A Phenomenological study of student mental health nurses narratives, of developing caring during their pre-registration nursing education.

Abstract

This research is located within the current debate surrounding a ‘crisis in care’ within the nursing profession. Caring has been considered at the foundation of nursing practice since the days of Florence Nightingale. However the contemporary healthcare environment with increasing nursing workloads and a focus on productivity measures is creating real barriers for nurses who wish to be caring. Nurse education is at the centre of this debate regarding its location within Higher Education and the move to an all graduate profession across all fields of nursing.

The aim of this study was to acquire a deeper understanding of how their development of caring was experienced within the pre-registration nursing mental health programme. A total of 9 second year student mental health (MH) nurses volunteered to participate in the study from a Higher Education Institution in the United Kingdom.

The interviews were analysed using an Interpretive Phenomenological Approach and this uncovered 3 super-ordinate themes. Participant’s identified with caring as an innate characteristic that is central to their ‘being’, and this acted as a key motivator towards becoming a Mental Health Nurse. Several effective pedagogies were identified in the study that enhance and enrich the participant’s innate caring qualities during their educational programme. The value of mental health practice placements and the role of reflection in their learning whilst acknowledged is also a source of dissonance as they encounter the reality of caring within mental health services.

The findings would indicate that caring within new student (MH) nurses’ is an innate human quality that requires awakening and validating rather than instilling by the appropriate nursing pedagogies grounded in the ethics of caring. The role of nurse educators is clearly to produce competent (MH) nurses who can remain ‘caring human beings’, whilst responding effectively to the social, economic and cultural transformations and contemporary nursing demands. Introducing and embedding approaches that develop resilience and increase emotional intelligence are essential to protect their professional ideals.