Patient dignity in psychiatric nursing practice

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  Dignity is a concept that relates to health and mental health care. Dignity is also related to human rights.
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  In psychiatric nursing practice, caregivers want to promote good and safe care, and take their ethical responsibility to safeguard the patient’s dignity in caring situations. Dignity may emerge when the will and courage to be there for someone else is allowed to permeate the caring acts.
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  There are situations where a patient’s dignity is offended in psychiatric nursing practice.
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  Where value conflict exists, these may lead to conflict in the human being and result in guilt and shame for the caregivers.

Professional nurses have an ethical responsibility to protect and preserve the patients’ dignity. The aim of this study was to describe how nurses experienced incidents relating to patients’ dignity in a psychiatric nursing practice. A hermeneutic approach was used and data were collected using the critical incident technique. Data included 77 written critical incidents, which were interpreted by using a hermeneutic text interpretation. The findings show preserved dignity – caregivers have the courage to be present, and offended dignity – caregivers create powerlessness taken away by the patient. These findings show that patients’ dignity in a psychiatric nursing practice can be preserved when caregivers act on their ethical responsibility. When patients’ dignity is offended, the caregiver has become an inner value conflict, something they have been a part of against their own will.