Cultural issues in pre-registered mental health student nurses’ clinical placements: an anthropologically informed critical incident study

The aim of this anthropologically informed qualitative study was to explore the primary cultural issues in mental health student nurses’ clinical placements and to explore how these issues in placements were dealt with, from the perspectives of years two and three mental health student nurses and their undergraduate university nursing educators. ‘Critical incident’ (Fitzgerald, 2000) focused ethnographic interviews (Spradley, 1979) were undertaken with a self-selected and purposive sample of 36 second and third year mental health nursing branch students, and 7 undergraduate mental health nursing branch educators across four nursing education centres in northern England. Member checking at descriptive and analytical levels was carried out, and these checks allowed for further exploration with the research participants to take place. Thematic analysis revealed that the primary issue to emerge from participants’ ‘critical incident’ accounts of cultural issues in clinical placements were problems with differentiating psychopathology from culturally validated phenomena. This issue relates to the clinical anthropological concept of the ‘normative uncertainty’ evaluation dilemma (Good and Good, 1986), and was particularly associated with concerns around assessing the clinical significance of service users’ religious beliefs, experiences, or practices.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Nottingham Trent University

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Bassett, AM

Language dc:language

en