SIGNIFICATIONS OF NURSING CARE IN MENTAL HEALTH FROM THE USERS’ PERSPECTIVE AT THE HOSPITAL’S SCHOOL OF MENTAL HEALTH IN PARANA; ENTRE RIOS; ARGENTINA

Stella Maris Duerto

Abstract

This study presents the significations of nursing for users of Mental Health hospitalisation services at the Hospital’s School of Mental Health in Parana, Entre Rios, Argentina which is a centre of reference within the province in dealing with mental illness.
This interpretative qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews with chronic and seriously affected patients, of both sexes, who have been hospitalised in the institution and also those being treated as visiting patients.
Within the conclusions and as a relevant aspect to be underlined is that, among the significations in Nursing Care for the users, that same care is intimately associated with the subjectivity of the persons practicing it, thus establishing an equivalence between quality of the care in itself and the human quality of the care as given by the professional. Nursing care in this context can assume the character of an asylum practice which in turn produces scars on the body of the patient; and when we speak of the “body”, we speak of subjectivity, understanding the body to be that same subjectivity.
From a more general analytical dimension on the significations that we have examined, it is possible to affirm that beyond the advances in the role of nursing in this disciplinary field, there is the predominance of a tutelary figure of the nursing personnel on the patients. Such aspects allow for rethinking the means of intervention of nursing in subjects with
mental illness.