Steve Trenoweth

Personal change amongst mental health nursing students: A longitudinal study

BACKGROUND Studies into the socialisation of nursing students have tended to concentrate on entrants reactions to work and on the development of knowledge and skills in relation to a particular occupational culture. However, the extent and manner of personal and psychological changes experienced by mental health nursing students during occupational socialisation have yet to be thoroughly addressed in the literature. OBJECTIVES To explore the psychological and personal changes of student mental health nurses over the first 2 years of their pre-registration mental health nursing programme. DESIGN Students from 2 mental health nursing cohorts at a London university were invited to participate. A semi-structured interview was used and the participants were asked to talk openly about their experiences. Ethics approval and informed consent was sought and obtained. PARTICIPANTS 20 students were selected at random and invited to be interviewed on 5 occasions over a 2 year period at roughly 6 month intervals. METHODS A total of 72 interviews were conducted. Interviews were tape recorded and verbatim transcribed for quantitative and qualitative content analyses. RESULTS Participants described moving from feeling uncertain, to increasing awareness and understanding of self and others, and, ultimately, feeling more accomplished in relation to their occupational world. CONCLUSIONS This study has highlighted the need for supporting students in developing their confidence and perceptions of self-efficacy and of recognising individual differences in students responses to uncertainty.

Stress at work: factors associated with cognitive disorganisation among private sector professionals

This study explores psychological and psychological variables associated with perceived stress at work. A total of 100 international participants consented to donating a hair sample and completing a work-related stress survey. Logistic regression was used to investigate associations with low/high cognitive disorganisation using data collected from hair cortisol analysis and self-report questionnaires. High cognitive disorganisation scores were associated with high cardiopulmonary and anger scores. Low perceived self-efficacy was associated with high cognitive disorganisation. An association was found between low cortisol and low perceived self-efficacy. The relationship between high cognitive disorganisation and low self-efficacy endorses previous claims linking performance to perceived high self-efficacy.

Nurses' perceptions of self-management in renal care

Self-management is vital for patients with long-term conditions in order to ensure wellbeing. It needs to be supported by a healthcare workforce who are knowledgeable and able to work in collaboration with individuals. In this study, ten nurses were selected by means of exclusion/inclusion criteria and then interviewed with a semi-structured approach. Following analysis of the data with an open, axial and selective coding process, clear themes emerged: expectation of roles, lack of confidence and concerns with risk-taking. There were a number of concerns around engaging with self-management for this group of nurses, including a lack of knowledge and skills to assess the suitability of patients for self-management and subsequently to offer support, and concerns that self-management would be too unsafe in a renal setting. This study suggests that nurses would need education in strategies to support and implement self-management. Further studies should be undertaken to explore this possibility with renal patients admitted to the ward.