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South African student nurses experience emotional discomfort that might influence their adjustment and coping while working with mentally challenged individuals. Adjustment and coping might impact on their mental health and support needed while working in this challenging context. Student nurses working with mentally challenged individuals experience emotional discomfort that may result in work-related stress. The experiences of student nurses working with mentally challenged individuals were explored and described as it may influence their adjustment, coping and result in work-related stress, impacting on their mental health. The study used a qualitative, explorative, descriptive, contextual research design with a case study as strategy. Thirteen student nurses from a specific higher educational institution in Gauteng, South Africa, participated in the focus group interviews. The researcher utilized reflective journals, a reflective letter, naïve sketches, drawings and field notes to collect data. Data analysis was done according to Tesch's descriptive method of open coding and theme analysis. A central storyline emerged where student nurses described working with mentally challenged individuals as a process of personal transformation that was initiated by an engagement on a deeper emotional level with these individuals. The process of personal transformation started a journey towards the discovery of meaning for the self, as student nurses. Student nurses working in challenging environments during their training may experience emotional discomfort and need additional support in coping and adjustment within this context. The nurse educator plays an important role in providing this support to manage work-related stress as well as in creating learning opportunities for the student nurses working in challenging contexts.

Hostile behaviour is becoming a way of life in South Africa. Hostility prevails at all settings, including in the health sector. In a forensic ward psychiatric nurses are subjected to hostile behaviour by the patients.The aim of the present study was to explore and describe the psychiatric nurses' experiences of hostile behaviour by patients in a forensic ward and make recommendations for nurse managers to empower these psychiatric nurses to cope with the patients' aggression.Qualitative, in-depth, phenomenological interviews were conducted with nine psychiatric nurses exposed to hostility from patients in a forensic ward. Recommendations were derived from the results from nurse managers to assist psychiatric nurses.It became apparent from the findings that psychiatric nurses in a forensic ward work in a stressful environment. Hostile behaviour in the forensic ward is consistently experienced by the psychiatric nurses as hindering therapeutic relationships. The psychiatric nurses experienced being disempowered.Psychiatric nurses experience hostile behaviour by patients in a forensic ward as disempowering. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSE MANAGEMENT: Nurse managers can facilitate psychiatric nurses' empowerment by providing them access to: information, support, resources, opportunity and growth.

The aims of this research were to explore and describe registered nurses' experiences of interacting with patients with mental health challenges in the medical wards of a public hospital in Johannesburg.Nurses are the major providers of hospital care and have become an important resource in the delivery of mental health care to patients with mental health challenges. However, the attitude and ability of many nurses in providing this care have been shown to be poor.In-depth phenomenological interviews were conducted with eight female registered nurses working in four medical wards where they interact with patients with mental health challenges.From the findings it is clear that registered nurses experienced frustration, unhappiness, fear and perception of danger when interacting with patients with mental health challenges in their wards. This could be attributed to a lack of knowledge and skills in mental health.Registered nurses have negative experiences with interaction with patients with mental health challenges in medical wards because of a lack of knowledge and skills in mental health.Ward managers can facilitate the psychological empowerment of registered nurses.

Students following an operating systems course often experience difficulties in mastering complex abstract concepts, such as concurrency, scheduling of processes and deadlock. The dining philosophers problem served as an example in demystifying many such difficulties. An experiment was designed in which students were tested on their knowledge of the dining philosophers problem after being exposed to a treatment program in which traditional textbook study methods in comparison to computer-assisted instructional methods were used. The results indicated that CAI techniques in this application do not guarantee an easier acquisition of knowledge than with conventional texts, particularly in relation to abstract concepts.