Nurses and Empathy: Psychiatric Nursing Today

Authors

  • Beverlee A. Cox

Abstract

In psychiatric settings today, nurses are expected to perform a therapeutic role in a collaborative manner with a team of mental health professionals. Just how this role is defined is open to question. Although the nursing discipline remains unique by virtue of its presence with patients 24 hours a day, every day, there is an inherent ambiguity in the definition of the nursing role. Are psychiatric nurses psychotherapists, as the social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and occupational therapists define themselves; or are they primarily guardians of the patients, there to assist the other disciplines in the delivery of therapeutic patient care? This question is philosophical in nature, and underlies much of the debate on psychiatric nursing practice at the present time (Janosik & Davies, 1989). In the traditional medical model approach to patient care, nurses are primarily expected to assist physicians in the delivery of health care services. In psychiatric settings, this has inevitably led to a dichotomy between the designated therapist's role and all other non-therapist patient care activities. By definition, to be "doing therapy" in psychiatric settings means taking on the therapist's role in the context of individual, group or family psychotherapy. All other activities, such as providing physical care for the patients, organizing activity programs, dispensing medications and interacting with other members of the interdisciplinary team, may be considered essential but are definitely regarded as having less substance than the role and related activities of the therapist (Manning, 1983).

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Published

1990-04-13

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Section

Articles