Challenges encountered by nurses in psychiatric wards in Iran: A hermeneutic phenomenological study

Despite the similarities between psychiatric nursing and other nursing specialties, psychiatric nursing is known to be more stressful. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, limited studies are available on psychiatric nursing challenges. This study aimed to address the challenges encountered by nurses in psychiatric wards in Iran.

A qualitative phenomenological study was carried out in 2019-2020 in psychiatric hospitals of Tehran and Zahedan. Nine nurses of psychiatric centers as participants were selected by purposeful sampling. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews until data saturation. Data were analyzed by the Van Manen data analysis method.

Out of 226 codes extracted from the interviews, the concepts were categorized into 2 themes: "professional threats" with 2 categories including "nurse harms", and "care and management threats", and "ethical dilemmas" derived from two categories of "unfavorable conditions for patients", and "none-compliance to professional ethics".

Psychiatric nurses in Iran face "professional threats" and "ethical dilemmas" due to "nurse harms", "care and management threats", "unfavorable conditions for patients", and "non-compliance to professional ethics". Also, they are not satisfied with the quality of their services. To keep them healthy, and promote psychiatric nursing care, it is necessary to promote human resources management, and objectively monitor the quality of care and staffs’ health.