The Preservation of Order: The Use of Common Approach Among Staff Toward Clients in Long-Term Psychiatric Care

The authors performed this grounded theory study to gain a deeper understanding of the kinds of social processes that lead to a need among psychiatric nursing staff to reach a common approach on how to act toward individual clients in long-term psychiatric care. They present a theory about the development of such common approaches among staff. The main findings were that in psychiatric group dwellings, when the internal order is perceived as having been disturbed, the staff preserve or restore the internal order by formulating and reaching a common approach. The staff negotiated with each other to achieve an agreement on how to act and behave toward the individual client. The authors isolate and describe different types of order-disturbing incidents and the common approaches taken by the staff in dealing with them. However, their data also show that staff often had difficulties in maintaining a common approach over time.