Help! Caring for People With Mental Health Problems in the Emergency Department: A Qualitative Study

After coronavirus disease 2019, there has been an increase in patients in the emergency department with mental health conditions. They are usually received by professionals who are not specialized in mental health. This study aimed to describe nursing staff's experiences in the emergency depart...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of emergency nursing 2023-09, Vol.49 (5), p.765-775
Main Authors: García-Carpintero Blas, Eva, Gómez-Moreno, Cristina, Moreno-Gomez-Toledano, Rafael, Ayuso-del-Olmo, Helena, Rodrigo-Guijarro, Eva, Polo-Martínez, Silvia, Manso Perea, Cesar, Vélez-Vélez, Esperanza
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Community hospitals
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Emergency care
Emergency medical care
Emergency services
Health problems
Health services
Interviews
Mental disorders
Mental health
Mental health care
Nurses
Nursing
Patient communication
Patients
Qualitative research
Recruitment
Snowball sampling
Stigma
Work environment
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:After coronavirus disease 2019, there has been an increase in patients in the emergency department with mental health conditions. They are usually received by professionals who are not specialized in mental health. This study aimed to describe nursing staff's experiences in the emergency department, in the care they provide to people with mental health problems who often feel stigmatized by society and also in health care settings. This is a descriptive qualitative study with a phenomenological approach. The participants were nurses from the Spanish Health Service from the emergency department of the Community of Madrid hospitals. Recruitment was performed by convenience sampling snowball sampling until data satruation was met. Data were collected through semistructured interviews conducted during January and February 2022. The exhaustive and detailed analysis of the nurses’ interviews made it possible to extract 3 main categories—health care, psychiatric patient, and work environment—with 10 subcategories. The main study findings were the need to train emergency nurses to be prepared to care for people who experience mental health concerns including bias education and the need for implementation of standardized protocols. Emergency nurses never doubted their ability to care for people experiencing mental health disorders. Still, they recognized that they needed specialized professionals’ support at certain critical moments.
ISSN:0099-1767
1527-2966
DOI:10.1016/j.jen.2023.04.007