“You get hardened to it”: nurses experience of working with severe and frequent self-injury

<p>This study explored the subjective experience of nurses working with female inpatientsengaging in frequent and severe self-injury. Instances of self-injurywithin female secure inpatient hospitals include scratching of the skin, selfligationand removal of body parts. Six nurses working at a high secure hospitalin England were interviewed using interpretative phenomenological analysismethodology. From the data, two super-ordinate themes were established;‘Experiencing of affect’ and ‘containing processes’. ‘Experiencing of affect’involved the sub themes: ‘fear of patient death, ‘state of perturbation’ and‘culmination of stress’. The theme ‘containing processes’ involved sub-themes:‘Habituation’ (toward the self-injury), ‘enjoyment of the job’, ‘establishingboundaries’ and ‘peer support’. It was hypothesised that these latter themesprovided some containment for nurses’ distress or protection from the negativeimpacts of working with self-injury. These findings differ somewhat from existingliterature on professionals working with self-injury. The theoretical and clinicalimplications of these findings for nursing practice when working with self-injuryare considered.</p>