Relationele fundamenten van verpleegkundige zorg voor patiënten met suïcidale ideaties: een multimethod onderzoek

Summary

Caring for individuals with suicidal ideation: rudiments of interpersonal interactions and relationships in mental health nursing
Joeri Vandewalle

AIMS: To understand how nurses make contact and build working alliances with patients who experience suicidal ideations and to investigate how patients with suicidal ideations experience and assess their contact with nurses.
METHOD: The multimethod research comprised four qualitative studies based on grounded theory. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nurses and patients in psychiatric wards. Additionally, a systematic review was conducted as well as a study focused on the development and psychometric evaluation of an instrument.
FINDINGS: Nursing care for people with suicidal ideation needs to be an interpersonal endeavour, characterised by meaningful contact, connecting with patients as unique individuals, and engaging in collaborative and therapeutic interactions. A new instrument with good psychometric properties was developed: the Contact with Nurses from the perspective of Patients with Suicidal ideation (CoNuPaS).
DISCUSSION and CONCLUSION: The conceptual insights can inform strategies to reframe overly instrumental approaches to prevent suicide and treat suicidal ideation, and instead promote an interpersonal orientation in nursing practice. The CoNuPaS can be used for clinical and research purposes to examine patients’ perceptions of their contact with nurses.

Keywords: nurse-patient relationship, nursing, psychiatric hospitals, suicidal ideation