injuries could require the suturing of larger areas of skin.
This created a sense of “calm” in regard to the wound/injury,
with a focus on the prevention of infection. The participants
experienced that wound care can be considered a form of
communication, yet disagreed as to whether they should call
attention to the wound/injury or not:
“I speak with the patient but I do not go into what
triggered it. I do not want the patient to start to
resist - the wound care. I want to be finished with
it. It is not so easy to know what can provoke it
(i2).”
4.2.6. Evaluating Need for Medication. Together with a physician
the participants assessed whether or not medication
could help patients reduce their mental pain. The participants
described that psychosis could be easier to treat than
emotionally unstable personality disorders, since neuroleptic
medication reduces psychotic symptoms that appear to
promote the need for self-harm. At times, participants used
medication to either “protect” patients from self-harm or
“knock out” patients so that they became calm or sleepy:
“Sometimes it can help to completely knock out
the patient [with medication]. The patient is given
Atrovan or a powerful antipsychotic medicine
(i7).”
The participants indicated that medicating patients can be
a way to alleviate patients’ expressions of pain when uncertainty
exists as to what interventions should be implemented:
“I think you can be a little too easy with this,
actually that you too quickly give medication
when we notice that we are unsure (i7).”
4.3. The Latent Theme. In the last phase of the analysis
process, the meaningful content of the subcategories and
categories was interpreted. The participants experienced that
they guide many patients to well-being and reduced rates
of self-harm, despite disappointing relapses and challenging
feelings. The nursing process started with seeking to understand
the self-harm patient, who often balances between life
and death, and how each unique patient’s well-being can
be promoted through the creation of a collaborative nursepatient
relationship and through a focus on person-centered
nursing interventions that promote the patient’s recovery
process. The underlying meaning of the participants’ experiences
of helping and caring for direct self-harm patients was
interpreted and then formulated as a latent theme: promoting
person-centered nursing to inpatients suffering from selfharm.
5. Discussion
In the actual study, participants described self-harm as a fluid
phenomenon that changes in intensity and character, from
mild self-harm to obvious suicide attempts. The participants
sought to understand and confirm the person behind “the
suffering human being” who has been mentally harmed