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Accessible summary: What is known on the subject?: Nurses in mental health inpatient settings use a range of methods to try and help service users who self‐harmHarm‐reduction approaches are intended to help service users reduce the impact of their self‐harm rather than simply to prevent them self‐harmingHarm‐reduction techniques might be helpful for people who cut themselves because there are some clear ways harm can be minimized such as providing advice about cuttingNo one has previously tried to measure whether harm‐reduction techniques are more or less acceptable to mental health practitioners and service users than traditional methods. What the paper adds to existing knowledge?: The paper describes the development of the Attitudes to Self‐cutting Management scale. It met the criteria required of a good measurement tool.Each method of managing self‐cutting has a unique acceptability profileHarm‐reduction methods like advising on wound care and providing a first aid kit are endorsed by nurses and former service usersNurses providing sterile razors or remaining present during self‐cutting attract more divergent opinions but are preferred to seclusion and restraint. What are the implications for practice?: Nurses should talk through the approaches to management with service users and agree which techniques are preferred. Introduction: Harm‐reduction approaches for self‐harm in mental health settings have been under‐researched. Aim: To develop a measure of the acceptability of management approaches for self‐cutting in mental health inpatient settings. Methods: Stage one: scale items were generated from relevant literature and staff/service user consultation. Stage two: A cross‐sectional survey and statistical methods from classical test theory informed scale development. Results/Findings: At stage one, N = 27 staff and service users participated. At stage two, N = 215 people (n = 175 current mental health practitioners and n = 40 people with experience of self‐cutting as a UK mental health inpatient) completed surveys. Principal components analysis revealed a simple factor structure such that each method had a unique acceptability profile. Reliability, construct validity and internal consistency were acceptable. The harm‐reduction approaches "advising on wound care" and "providing a first aid kit" were broadly endorsed; "providing sterile razors" and "maintaining a supportive nursing presence during cutting" were less acceptable but more so than seclusion and restraint. Discussion: The Attitudes to Self‐cutting Management scale is a reliable and valid measure that could inform service design and development. Implications for practice: Nurses should discuss different options for management of self‐cutting with service users. Harm‐reduction approaches may be more acceptable than coercive measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessible summary What is known on the subject? The concept of compassion is well documented in the healthcare literature but has received limited attention in mental health nursing., What this paper adds to existing knowledge? Mental health nurses struggle with defining compassion. The study, with its limitations, brings greater clarity to the meaning of compassion for community mental health nurses and NHS organizations., Mental health nurses need time to reflect on their provision of compassionate care., What are the implications for practice? The study has shown that compassion is important for NHS healthcare management, frontline mental health nurses and policy-makers in UK, and there is potential for sharing practice and vision across NHS organisations., Mental health nurses could benefit from training to facilitate their understanding of compassionate practices., Emphasis should be placed on the importance of self-compassion and how this can be nurtured from the secure base of clinical supervision., Abstract Introduction There is increasing emphasis in policy, research and practice in the UK and internationally on the importance of caring in health care. Compassion needs to be at the core of all healthcare professionals' practice. Recently, health care has received negative attention through media and government reports which cite a lack of compassion in care. Rationale The concept of compassion has received limited attention in community mental health nursing. Aim Based on data taken from semi-structured interviews with community mental health nurses, this paper aims to describe interpretations and perspectives of compassion to gain insight and development of its meaning. Method A naturalistic, interpretive approach was taken to the study. Semi-structured interviews with nine mental health nurses were analysed using Burnard's 14-step model of thematic analysis. Findings The research illuminates the complexity of compassion and how its practice impacts on emotional responses and relationships with self, patients, colleagues and the employing organization. Participants identified difficulties engaging with compassionate practice whilst recognizing it as a driving force underpinning provision of care. Implications for practice Mental health nurses need to be supported to work towards a greater understanding of compassionate care for clinical practice and the need for self-compassion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessible summary What is known on the subject? Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) is an effective model of brief psychotherapy., Evidence suggests that nurses can be trained to deliver SFBT with only a few days training., It has been argued that SFBT reflects the core values of nursing practice, but no empirical research has been undertaken to validate this assertion., What does this paper add to existing knowledge? This is the first time the impact of such training on nurses' sense of professional and personal identity has been explored., Drawing upon data derived from twenty interviews, this paper explores the key themes reported by nurses in relation to their personal experience of training in SFBT., This paper extends our understanding of the lived experience of mental health nurses and facilitates discussion on the preparation and practice of their role., What are the implications for practice? Training in SFBT can provide a framework for nurses to empower their clients/patients to take control of their own recovery in a shared and trusting relationship., Training in SFBT can enhance nurses' sense of trust in their clients., Training in solution-focused interactions may provide a framework for many nurses to provide the type of collaborative, patient-led care they aspire to., Abstract Introduction SFBT is a psychotherapeutic model that aims to 'build solutions' rather than 'solve problems'. It has evolved into a structured communication framework utilized across a range of disciplines, focusing on the future, as opposed to the past, and on participant's strengths and abilities, as opposed to their problems and deficits. There have been no studies exploring the experience of training in SFBT from the perspective of the nurses being trained. Aim This study sought to explore the experience of nurses who had completed a six-month training course in SFBT. Methods Using a qualitative methodology, 20 nurses who had undertaken SFBT training were interviewed at various locations across Scotland. Results Five main themes emerged from analysis of the 20 interviews. Many of the participants reported increased trust in their clients and enhanced role satisfaction. Implications for Practice Training in SFBT provides nurses with an alternative model of practice to the dominant 'medical' and 'psychological' models of contemporary practice. The experiences of the participants in this study suggest that SFBT can be a useful intervention in nursing practice and that nurses can easily incorporate SFBT into their practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessible summary Research into the patient's perspective on their care is being given increasing importance within health and nurse education policy, predicated upon the idea that the findings represent the patient experience., Researchers have power to silence the voices of research participants through the process of authorship. Exploring the arts as a means of presenting findings offers the opportunity problematize issues of power and authorship, and examine ways of decentring the researcher's voice., Re/presentation of patient experience in poetic form encourages readers to engage with that experience as they have to actively interpret the meaning of the poem., Researchers interested in examining and conveying the experience of others should be encouraged to problematize issues of authorship and consider the impact of their authority on the re/presentation of the experience of the other., Abstract The study aimed to understand the experience of being a patient on an acute psychiatric inpatient ward. A further aim was to open up spaces for the voices of participants to be heard. Contemporary government policy places patient experience at the centre of healthcare policy and service development. Despite this, those who occupy marginalized discourses struggle to be heard within the dominant discourse of health care. A qualitative approach was used, and narrative was conceptualized as representing experience. Sociolinguistic theories informed the development of the analytic framework treating meaning as contextual and arising from both content and structure of narratives. Concepts of representation, voice and authorship were problematized. Thirteen people who had been inpatients on an acute psychiatric inpatient ward participated. Narrative data were gathered using unstructured interviews. The data were analysed holistically using a method that attended to both the structure and content of the narrative. The product of these holistic narratives was the development of a poem representing each participant's experience. This paper focuses on the development of these poems as a method of decentring the authorial voice and opening up spaces for the voices of the participants to be heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute psychiatric inpatient care forms an integral part of mental health services. Few studies have focussed on the patient experience of acute care. Research into patient experience is increasingly important to policy and service development processes. Knowledge of patient experiences facilitates the development of nursing practice. The aim of the study was to gain insight into the experience of being a patient on an acute inpatient psychiatric ward. Thirteen participants were recruited from the acute ward. Unstructured interviews were used to gather narrative data of their experiences. Holistic analysis of the narratives was informed by Gee's socio-linguistic theories that meaning is linked to narrative structure. Reading of the holistic analyses yielded themes of help, safety and power running across the participants' experiences. The patient experience was characterized by dissonance between expectation and experience, the search for a nurse--patient relationship and the development of strategies to cope with being on the acute ward. This paper focuses on the theme of 'Help' where participants describe their expectation that they will receive help through the development of relationships with the nurses, and their experience of the barriers to this. In response, participants developed strategies to support each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]