M.Cur. / Violence and aggression in psychiatric hospitals are a worldwide known phenomenon. South Africa is no exception to the rule. Previous researches conducted in psychiatric institutions have mainly focused on the patients, leaving everyone to guess how this violence affects nurses who are in contact with the patients on a daily basis and who are key role-players in the care, treatment, and rehabilitation of the patients under their responsibility. The research aimed to explore and describe the lived experience of aggression and violence by the registered nurses in a Gauteng psychiatric institution, the essence of this violence, and how nurses cope with this violence, in order to formulate guidelines and recommendations that could assist them to manage violence. A qualitative, explorative, descriptive, and contextual study design was utilised. Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews, and naïve sketches. Tesch’s method was used for data analysis, here and an independent coder was utilised. The uniqueness of this study was to bring to the surface the other side of violence as it is perceived and lived by the nurses. The findings show that the nurses face violence on a daily basis. Among the contributing factors there are: the type of patients admitted in the hospital; the staff shortage; the lack of support among the members of the multidisciplinary team (MDT); and the lack of structured and comprehensive orientation. The consequences of this violence to the nurses are emotional, psychological, and physical and take the form of: fear, anger, frustration, despair, hopelessness and helplessness, substance abuses, absenteeism, retaliation, a development of an “I don’t care attitude”, injuries, and damage to personal properties such as clothes, and spectacles.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:6811 |
| Date | 24 May 2010 |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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