The psychiatric patient's right to self-determination: A preliminary investigation from the professional nurse's point of view

The aim of this preliminary empirical investigation was to explore the concept of self-determination and to discuss its applicability to psychiatric nursing. The data were collected with a questionnaire submitted to professional nurses (n=127) working on long-term wards in four Finnish hospitals. Data analysis combined the methods of content analysis and quantitative statistics. A tentative concept apparatus was created in order to provide nursing science with a broader understanding of the issue at hand. Nurses identified various factors that act to restrict and to support self-determination: the most common restrictive factor was the patient's illness or condition, and the most common supportive factor was nursing intervention. Views differed on the importance of self-determination in the case of psychiatric patients; over half of the nurses described the right to self-determination as very important. On the basis of the findings it is concluded that self-determination is a valid concept for the psychiatric patient. It was also thought to serve the needs of education as well as evaluation.