'Your experiences were your tools’:How personal experience of mental health problems informs mental health nursing practice.

摘要

Introduction: ‘Expertise by experience’ is a highly valued element of service delivery in recovery-oriented mental health care, but is unacknowledged within the mental health nursing literature. Aim: To explore the extent and influence of mental health professionals’ personal experience of mental ill health on clinical practice. Method: Twenty seven mental health nurses with their own personal experience of mental ill health were interviewed about how their personal experience informed their mental health nursing practice, as part of a sequential mixed methods study. Results: The influence of personal experience in nursing work was threefold: first, through overt disclosure; second, through the ‘use of the self as a tool’; third, through the formation of professional nursing identity. Discussion: Mental health nurses’ experience of mental illness was contextualised by other life ex-periences and by particular therapeutic relationships and clinical settings. In previous empirical stud-ies nurses have cited personal experience of mental illness as a motivator and an aspect of their identity. In this study there was also an association between personal experience and enhanced nursing expertise.Implications for practice: If drawing on personal experience is commonplace, then we must address the taboo of disclosure and debate the extent to which personal and professional boundaries are negotiated during clinical encounters.