Aim: The aim was to describe the ways that nursing staff in psychiatric inpatient care understand nursing.
Background: Nursing in psychiatric care is marginalized with ambiguous role definitions and imperceptible activities. Nurse managers' capabilities to establish a direction and shared vision are crucial to motivate nursing staff to take part in practice development. However, before establishing a shared vision it is important to identify the different ways nursing can be understood.
Methods: Sixteen individual semi-structured interviews with nursing staff members were analysed using a phenomenographic approach.
Results: Five ways of understanding nursing were identified. These understandings were interrelated based on the way that the patient, nursing interventions and the goal of nursing were understood.
Conclusion: The diversity of identified understandings illuminates the challenges of creating a shared vision of roles, values and goals for nursing.
Implications for nursing management: Awareness of staff members' different understandings of nursing can help nurse managers to establish a shared vision. To be useful, a shared vision has to be implemented together with clear role definitions, professional autonomy of nurses and support for professional development. Implementation of such measures serves as a foundation to make nursing visible and thereby enhance the quality of patient care.
Keywords: nursing; nursing management; phenomenography; psychiatric inpatient care; shared vision.
© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Nursing Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.