Limitations
The study relied on interviews to elicit descriptions of nurses’ assessment practice. This self-report approach is prone to influence from a number of factors including a desire to provide a description of the ‘correct’ rather than the true approach to mental health assessment and the influence of the nurses’ recall of their most recent assessment experiences. An observational approach may have produced different insights into the process of mental health nursing assessment. A further limitation of the study is the process of recruitment of participants. Initial participants were known to the first author. While those recruited using an alternative method reinforced existing themes, the possibility of the introduction bias in the results cannot be discounted.