Adopting Care Provider–Facilitator Roles: Community Mental Health Nurses and Young Adults with an Early Episode of Schizophrenia

Abstract

The study focused on how community mental health nurses promoted wellness when caring for young adults with schizophrenia. Grounded theory methodology informed data collection and analysis. Interviews and observations were held with nurses, mental health clients and significant others. The findings showed that the basic social psychological problem was conceptualized as uncertainty of direction, which reflected nurses’ uncertainty when contemplating how to assimilate the promotion of wellness into their discourse of care. Nurses dealt with this problem through a basic social psychological process conceptualized as adopting care provider–facilitator roles. There were two inter-related domains or foci of care, which related to the way nurses promoted wellness, and within each domain there were one or more phases. Contextual determinants moderated the way nurses adopted care provider–facilitator roles. The findings have implications for clinical practice, nursing administration, nursing education, and nursing research, and these are discussed.