An ethnographic study of psychiatric nursing.

There is a well documented continuing anomaly between what is expected of a psychiatric nurse and observations of practice. This paper presents an ethnographic study carried out in three acute psychiatric in-patient units over one year. Methods used were participant observation and semistructured interviews of 15 trained nurses. Three themes were isolated during and following data analysis: the difficulty of working closely with mentally disturbed individuals; maintaining distance and congruent care. There was a notable dichotomy, that of wanting to work with the patients but constantly feeling that what they intuitively wanted to do was not right.