Uncovering psychosocial needs: Perspectives of Australian child and family health nurses in a sustained home visiting trial
Katina Kardamanidis
NSW Department of Health, North Sydney NSW
Lynn Kemp
Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Health Equity Training Research and Evaluation (CHETRE), Liverpool Hospital; University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW
Virginia Schmied
School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Western Sydney, Sydney NSW
PP: 50 - 58
Abstract
The first Australian trial of sustained nurse home visiting provided an opportunity to explore nurses' understanding of the situations that support mothers of infants to disclose personal and sensitive psychosocial information.
Using a qualitative descriptive design, semi-structured interviews were conducted and transcripts were analysed drawing upon aspects of Smith's interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five themes pertaining to the experience of relationship building to foster disclosure of sensitive information emerged:
- Building trust is an ongoing process of giving and giving in return
- Being 'actively passive' to develop trust
- The client is in control of the trust-relationship
- The association between disclosure of sensitive issues and a trust-relationship, and
- Empowerment over disclosure.
This study provides a deeper understanding of how child and family health nurses develop relationships that lead women to entrust the nurse with personal, sensitive information, and may inform the practice of psychosocial needs assessment in other contexts.
Keywords
home visits, empowerment, psychosocial risk assessment, nurse-patient relationship, child and family health nurse, interviews, phenomenology
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