title: Mental health intensive care: the nurses' experience and perceptions of a new unit.
abstract: This paper describes a qualitative research study which explored the practices and views of nurses working on a new mental health intensive care unit. A review of the literature identified the main aspects of intensive care provision: (1) physical security, (2) characteristics of the patient group, (3) staff-patient ratios. (4) therapeutic environment and (5) multi-agency involvement. Twenty-one periods of participant observation helped form the questions for a semi structured in-depth tape recorded interview in which 11 out of a total of 16 trained nurses took part. The information is categorized and the discussion is informed by observation of practice. The nurses perceived the following as the main issues: that the physical environment is inadequate for security; that the patient group appears to have the common characteristic of being unwanted in other clinical settings; that the staff-patient ratio is inadequate and that their vision of the nature of a therapeutic environment is vague.
authors.affiliation: University of Nottingham, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Derby, England.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gentle
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002908:Chronic Disease; D004739:England; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000451:nursing*; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012637:Security Measures; D000078329:Workforce