Helping methods used by nurses in a psychiatric hospital environment

This qualitative study aims to describe the helping methods used by psychia tric nurses in a hospital environment from as evidenced by video observatio ns and nurses' and patients' descriptions. The data, which were collected b y videotaping different nursing situations and by interviewing the nurses a nd patients afterwards, consisted of 520 pages of written text. A total of 569 utterances were extracted from the text to describe the helping methods used in psychiatric nursing. Each utterance constituted a classification u nit. Deductive content analysis techniques were used to analyze the data. T he results obtained from the nurses' and patients' descriptions and the vid eotaped episodes showed that the most commonly used helping methods were of the confirmatory kind (50%), while educational methods came second (37%) a nd catalytic methods third (13%). (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.