Critique of a Nursing Research Article by Bente, Christina, Marie and Birgitta

In the given research article by Bente, Christina, Marie and Birgitta, the evident research problem, is the reported exclusion of the relatives of persons with mental illness in the medical health care centers.  As we already know, the research problem is the fuel that actually drives an individual researcher into carrying out the research process. Due to the reported cases of exclusion of the relatives of those individual with mental illness, issuing of the quality health services to these individuals can poses a great challenge since their perception of the ‘new people’ ,that is, the nurses, will not automatically be welcoming without faces they recognize, their relatives. The purpose or the main aim of the research as clearly indicated in the article is to describe conceptions of nurses in mental health care about supporting relatives of persons with severe mental illness.

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How do the nurses in the health care centers conceive the relatives of the persons with the mental illness and how their conceptions affect their obligations in their fields of professionalism? The aim of this question is to identify whether or not it affects their delivery of the services to these individuals with mental illness. In summary, the researchers’ review of literature is satisfactory as evident in the article, every research article, in its third step, review of literature is necessary to familiarize the researcher with the wide understanding to conceptualize the research problem.

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It gives the researcher different views from the different authors who have shown concern in the study area. The article has many citations of books with authors mentioned to support this. Concerning the nursing frame work of the study, the content of the study revolved around the nursing care, aspects of the actors and relational concerns and between them, relationship between the nursing personnel, the individuals with mental illness and the relatives of the individuals with the mental illness. The research questions are: Are relatives satisfied with mental health professionals concerning their own needs? Do the relatives pose challenges in the health personnel? Is their need for collaborations between the health personnel and the relatives of persons with mental illness? The hypothesis here simply means the intelligent guesses about the research findings. In this article, the relatives need attention from the health personnel and there should be a well-defined positive relationship between the health personnel and relatives of the individuals with the health issues.

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The variables in the research are evident, the mental health nurses, the registered nurses, the hospitals available, the out and in patients. There are the independent variables and the dependent variables; the article has its statistics in representing both.

In the article, under the design and methodology, the researcher employed a quality, descriptive study with a phenomenograhic approach, an approach that has its basis in cognitive psychology. This approach ensures a satisfactory design for the research project in the nursing-clinical area. It is so descriptive and investigative qualities both desired for the study in the clinical department. For instance, as indicated in the research article, this approach design investigates the internal relationship between the world and how the world is experienced. The design is proposed to have a wide scope of study that in turn produces objectively desired findings. The design is therefore appropriate and best for the research topic. It ensures exhaustiveness of the research areas and details needed for the study.  The design aids in making the research much more reliable and effective upon putting the research recommendations in practice, in the research, it was most effective in describing the various perceptions of the phenomenon under the study providing a logical relationship between the descriptive categories.

The validly of the research can be best evaluated depending on the satisfaction of the requirements of a quality research. First, the research has all the required six steps mentioned fully; no step is evidently missing or incomplete. This to a minimal extend makes the research valid. Secondly, we can determine how appropriate the research was to its questions. The research findings were relevant to the research questions. The methodology of the research was satisfactory and is geared towards the best of the expected findings. Data collection method and their appropriate administration methods were satisfactory.

The study has resolved the question as evidenced from the article as it highlights out the effectiveness of this study.  From the study, nurses are responsible to their patients in that, they are obliged to develop an alliance with their patients. It is evidencedthat thetwo sides exist. Concerning nurses’ support to the relatives, nurses opt to see the relative in the shoes of the patient or as individual person. The study also highlights out that demanding life events such as severe mental illness faced by patients will not only affect them but also will affect those close to them. In Norway for instance, a total of around 300,000-600,000 relatives may be involved with the approximately 150,000 persons in Norway who have a severe mental illnessNorwegian (Ministry of Health and Care Services, 2012). The study also reveals that relatives find difficulty in getting included by health personnel and in case they are, mostly it is for the sake of that patient. Relatives experience alienation from professional care such as nurses who rarely cooperate with such relatives although they (relatives) want to cooperate in the care. The study reveals that mental health professionals do not highly focus on relatives when reflecting on or describing their own work resulting to relatives’ getting dissatisfied with mental health professionals pertaining their own needs.

The central government of Norway for example is responsible for specialist health services for mental health for adults also the municipalities are responsible for primary healthcare services to patients with severe mental illness. Form the study, mental healthcare legislations do regulate patient’s confidentiality and influences mental health personnel’s possibility of giving information to patient’s relatives. It is also evidence that relatives receive general information about relevant illnesses and general treatment and if patient consents, closest relative attains the right to receive information about the patient’s treatment and health condition.

Different cultures other than Norwegian expressed divergent views on family, treatment and mental illness. Nurses wished to cooperate with them but to the nurses, such cultures lacked necessary knowledge about the way of living. Also, the nurses reported they could stretch rules or look other ways to greater extent to these families than with ethnic Norwegian relatives.

In Norwegian healthcare institutions were asked to participate where registered mental health nurses with minimum of 2 years’ experience were sampled. They were to speak and understand Norwegian in order to discover conceptual variations of phenomenon been studied. The nurses came from cities, local communities and from different levels of mental healthcare system. After the analysis, the category of our responsibility is first and foremost the patient was found to compose of three descriptive categories including the context framing nursing care, relational concerns and aspects of the actors.

The article describes procedural endeavors that are geared towards a more specific method.The research in the article generally under carries and employs a phenomenographic approach which being based on a second order perspective, is inwardly directed to the phenomena being studied. The method takes more data form the perspectives of how the phenomena is thought of in the outside environment.In this way, the research focuses on how the world is experienced and how it is.Well, to be explicit, data collection has been done using interviews as the key procedure. Norwegian nurses are the observers to the focus groups while a moderator is employed to intercede in the interview techniques.

The interview enables the research to produce dependable results. The outcome space accommodates various possibilities. The categories featured on a descriptive platform and the logical relationships between them are considered. The actual results depict the whole picture on the support of mental patients by their relatives. It goes to a conclusion that the nurses are more linked to the patient rather than the relatives of the patient. As a result, the nurse strives to cater for the needs of the patient than those of the relatives (Nystro & Lu 2002). They fail to see the patient as the shadow of the patient and sees them as individuals. Nevertheless, the relative of a mentally ill patient in real sense undergoes mental and emotional suffering which arises from their fellow family member being in another suffering. Nurses on a general point of view choose the patient while presented with a conflicting interests of the patient and the relative. It in turn leads the relatives feeling powerless over the situation (Weimand et al., 2011). It further brings about the feeling of alienation and therefore some sort of depression (Ewertzon et al., 2010).

With these findings, there exists a better option for the future of nursing practice. These findings attract the attention of the whole nursing arena into adopting new strategies to cater for the mentally ill relatives in the treatment plans. The research itself has provided recommendations that could see a better care for both the patients and their relatives. On an even better scale, student nurses are in a position to adopt a new way of learning that seeks to eliminate such problems that have been identified by the research. Students nursing practice therefore stands in a higher grade of learning than before. In this way, the research creates a path of the betterment of the whole nursing practice.

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