Exploring Clients' Experiences of Transitioning Mental Health Nursing Care from an In-Person to a Virtual Format due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led mental health professionals to change the way they engaged with clients, often replacing in-person consultations with virtual ones via telephone or videoconferencing. While studies have investigated the delivery of virtual physical health care, only a handful have investigated the delivery of virtual mental health. These specifically focussed on the outcomes of virtual care whether experiential, practical, or empirical. The transition from in-person to virtual care delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been unexplored. Accordingly, the purpose of the study was to: (1) Explore the experiences of clients who had to transition from an in-person to a virtual provision of mental health care due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and; (2) Explore the nurses' experiences of this technological transition. Using an interpretive phenomenology methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nurses and clients who have experienced the in-person to virtual transition of service delivery at a tertiary mental health hospital in Ontario, Canada. In this article, we focus on the results stemming from our interviews with clients. The themes generated from the analysis of client experiences are 1) the psychosocial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clients, (2) mixed feelings of clients towards nursing care delivered via technological means and (3) the role of nurses regarding transitioning of in-person care to technology-mediated care. These findings are relevant as mental health care hospitals are considering how they will deliver services once concerns with the transmission of the COVID-19 virus are resolved.

"The Person Gets Lost in the Whole Process": Access to Physical Healthcare for Patients Hospitalized in a Psychiatric Hospital.

Background and Purpose: Persons living with mental illnesses have unmet physical healthcare needs, leading to premature death. When they attempt to access physical health services, they are faced with numerous barriers that lead to delays in care. Although mental health nurses are identified as being essential actors in helping persons with mental illnesses navigate the complexities of the healthcare system, they also engage in conduct that further stigmatizes them. To complicate matters more, mental health nurses themselves face stigmatization when they help their patients living with mental illnesses access physical healthcare services. The aim of the study was to explore mental health nurses' experiences of associative stigma when accessing physical health services for their patients. Methods: To achieve this aim, we used an interpretive phenomenology methodology and a theoretical framework rooted in Erving Goffman's notion of associative stigma. Specifically, we conducted six interviews with mental health nurses working at an urban multisite psychiatric hospital to elicit accounts of their experiences of associative stigma when seeking physical healthcare for their patients and the meanings they make of these. Results: The results presented in this article illustrate some of the mechanisms by which stigmatization toward persons living with mental illnesses and mental health nurses cause delays in physical healthcare accessibility. Implications for Practice: In our discussion, we highlight the implications of these results for the practice of nurses and propose two structural solutions to improve access to physical healthcare and reduce stigmatizing experiences.

"You're Just a Mental Health Nurse": Nurses' Experiences of Associative Stigma When Accessing Physical Health Care for Their Patients.

In this article, we present the results of an interpretive phenomenology looking at mental health nurses' experiences of associative stigma when accessing physical health care for their patients. Our results illustrate the multifaceted dynamics of stigma in the context of mental health nursing and the direct impacts stigmatizing behaviors have on mental health nurses and patients alike, including an impeded access to health care services, loss of social status and personhood, and the internalization of stigma. They also highlight how nurses resist to stigma and how they help their patients cope with stigmatization.

An Integrative Review of Mental Health Nurses' and Other Professionals' Experience of Associative Stigma.

Mental health nurses report experiencing stigmatization both from within and outside the profession, and associative stigma provides one way to explore that experience. To better understand the current state of the literature on mental health care professionals' experiences of associative stigma, and particularly on nurses' experience of this phenomenon, an integrative review of the literature on the subject was conducted. The results detail factors associated with associative stigma, the effects of associative stigma on nurses and caregivers of persons with mental illnesses, and the quantification of associative stigma. This article concludes by discussing implications for nursing practice, education, and research.