Facilitating living with persons with schizophrenia : relationships between psychiatric nurses and family members

Abstract

Persons with schizophrenia are persons who have disturbances of thinking mood, and behaviors that can cause serious impairment of a person’s day-to-day functioning. This means that families must provide a great deal of support to their ill family members. The family members had encountered with difficulties in caring for their ill relatives. As a result of the difficulties, the family members tried to avoid involvement in caring for their patients. Psychiatric nurses have a great role in supporting families in such care. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between psychiatric nurses and family members of persons with schizophrenia. This research employed a qualitative research method, grounded theory. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, observations, and field notes with 16 psychiatric nurses. Data were analyzed with constant and comparative methods by Glaser (1978). The present study revealed the basic social process of facilitating living with persons with schizophrenia. This process consists of four major stages- Establishing trust, strengthening connection, promoting readiness to care, and supporting. In the first stage, psychiatric nurses used the strategy of establishing trust to make the family members to get a sense of trust with them before talking about their concerns and needs. Later, the stages of strengthening connections, promoting readiness to care, and supporting were employed to facilitate the family members to be able to care for and support the persons with schizophrenia to live with the family. This substantial theory suggests a new knowledge and insights into ways to help family members of persons with schizophrenia. It can be used as a basis for developing a nursing guideline for working with family members.