Self-Harming: Dissatisfaction with the Kind of Care by the Statutory Services - Essay Example

Self-harming Lecturer Several people who have reportedly having experienced self-harm experiences a feeling of dissatisfaction with the kind of care being provided by the statutory services. This review will help in providing vital exploration of the evidence when examining the attitudes of professionals of healthcare across medical as well as mental health settings towards the population of people who do self-harm. It also explores in-depth the perception of the users of the care services. A search of the literature that was conducted through electronic databases and cross matching reference lists gave out nineteen papers that helped in meeting the criteria used in the inclusion. An analysis using a thematic approach on literature indicates six important areas that help in contributing to the development of the attitudes that are defined as being positive or being negative towards the type of people who are known to do self-harm. Lack of training and education was the main link of negative experience and attitudes. In addition, it was also associated with the impact as a result of perception differences of the roles of healthcare professionals and the influence due to clinical culture as well as how people do perceive self-harm as a health need. Greater understanding of self-harm experiences and improved training were linked to positive attitudes. Despite this, the nature of the care reported by the consumer of the services indicates that significant improvement are still needed to the health care attitudes in the health settings ensure high-quality services are being provided to the consumers. Introduction The issue of self-harm is significant within the services regarded as contemporary. Several people who do self-harm in many times do manage their wounds at home; however, certain occasions where injuries caused by self-harm need to be seen in the settings of hospital. Several of the consumers of the services that have been receiving health care services in hospitals have reported dissatisfaction and bad experience with the kind of services being rendered. The experiences of the services by the consumers have greatly contributed to the development and survivor groups’ actions. Several authors have described the word survivor in relation to this circumstance as an aspect of surviving the services of psychiatry in addition to other experiences lived. This is a clear show that the provision of service that was intended to help the people who are victims of self-harm has been reported as being traumatic for several number of healthcare service consumers (Cresswell 2005, P. 1668–1677 ). Some studies suggest that those people who have presented self-harm injuries in the past years are more likely to commit suicide compared to any other general public individual. The care services on provision to the public who are in need should be acceptable and aim at reducing the incidences of suicide among the victims of self-harm. It is noted that in the first-line facilities the services on offer provide the best chances in helping people with self-harm through the appropriate interventions. The intention of the review is to appraise the evidence presented through exploration of the attitudes of the healthcare personnel’s towards the victims and especially those people who do inflict self-harm. In this concept, the act of self-harm is defined as an impulse or a compulsion by an individual to inflict or cause physical wounds on his or her body. In this case, he or she may be motivated by a coping strategy of psychological distress that is unbearable so that he or she can regain a sense of emotional stability. The act of self-harm by these victims is usually carried out without any decorative, sexual, or suicidal intentions (Cronin, Ryan & Coughlan 2008, P. 38–43). Research methods used The literature review mainly focused on papers and sources of information that relates to self-harm and self-injury in order to achieve the aims and objectives of the study. The research method used primarily put much of its focus on self-harm as the major need of health that brought the victims of self-harm in contact with the health services being delivered, and henceforth excluded the information and papers that relates to attempts on suicide and self-harm that are related to suicidal ideations. In-depth literature was sought across different settings of health care that included both mental health and medical environments, so that a detailed insight could be gotten into the influences on the attitudes of health professionals towards the victims who do self-harming. From the methods used, papers that were based within the acute medical, accident and emergency as well as wards of mental health hospitals were included in order to ensure relevance is in the practice. This further helps in enabling the opportunities to be used in exploring issues that relates to health care personnel’s experience and knowledge of working in partnership with the victims of self-harm (Friedman, Newton, Coggan, et al. 2006, P. 273–277). The electronic databases were used in accessing the information through search that was used in reflecting an increasingly common strategy within the review of the literature. CINHAL, Embase, British Nursing Index, PsychINFO, EBSCOhost, and the Cochrane Library were on target specifically to help in ensuring both the information obtained from mental health and those that are applied to wider healthcare settings were accessed easily. The accessibility of the information was not hard to find, and the fact that the information is obtained from recognized sources makes it credible for learning purposes. The searches used for accessing the information were only confined to English language. In the process of obtaining same information, international papers were used to help in enabling a wider examination on the attitudes of health professionals working with the public who do self-harm and thus providing a great chance for comparing cultural influences with the incidence of self-harm in the society. In the process of getting relevant information in the study of self-harm, keywords such as ‘self-injury’, ‘attitudes’, ‘parasuicide’ and ‘self-harm’ were searched on all of the databases and search engine tools in order to provide the needed information relating to self-harm. When combined, two hundred and forty-eight citations were identified and used, although a total of nineteen of those citations were used to meet the criteria used for inclusion. For the samples to be included in the study, they needed to be adults who were eighteen years of age and above. The materials used for referencing of the papers included were thoroughly checked to ensure that the search done electronically had not left out any influential and relevant papers that are key in reflecting the objectives and aims of the review and that the papers used had matched the criteria used for inclusion. Self-harm The review of literature aim was to give a vital appraisal and evaluation of the literature that relates to the outlined topic of discussion. Therefore, the analysis that was used in the papers where the information was retrieved showed an adoption of interpretative thematic approaches. Each paper used in obtaining the data was read keenly, and the key concepts, preliminary limitations, and methodological approaches noted. Following the initial paper appraisal, further review of the information led to the content being put into different categories so that emerging themes can be identified. The process of mapping the details of these themes help in enabling the process of combining different types of literature and was the main approach that was adopted in this review. The approach allows the emerging commonalities identification, differences as well as patterns in concepts and ideas. In order to maintain perspective of literature analysis within each theme, the information was appraised basing on the evaluation of information regarded as key arguments, exploration of positions that are alternative and research method appraisal (Hadfield, Brown, Pembroke, et al. 2009, P. 755–765). The themes are used in highlighting the evidence provided an indication of factors that were originally perceived to have negative or positive attitudes to caring for people who do self-harm. The attitudes may probably become positive or negative depending on the individual bias of the researcher and the interpretation of the information. However, the use of such groupings allows easy examination of trends to be done. In this review, it is apparent that it suggests that the users of the services are continuing to be dissatisfied with the kind of care that they do receive in health care settings and may be experiencing attitudes that are unhelpful from healthcare professionals. Central to the report given out by Ham (2009, P. 1760) is the high need for the quality service of care, offering the standards that high-quality services ought to be aiming at and achieving. What it seems is that, through the papers where information was obtained discussed that vital standards are not being met with the victims who have inflicted harm on themselves. From the accounts of the consumers of the services perspectives, respect, compassion and dignity were lacking. According to the Department of Health 2008, recommendation that consumer of the services with long-term conditions have personalized the plan of care to ensuring quality of care may offer the best framework for the staff and those people who are in need of the care. This is very important when putting the study where an increment in the negativity that is reported by the staff is put into consideration. The most important thing is that the papers where the information was retrieved show that not only are the consumers of the services unsatisfied, but also the staff seems to be discontented with the health care services they are providing. It is worth to recognize that in some literature it was noted that the consumers of healthcare services felt that the healthcare staff personnel seem to be competent when it came to their specific roles. The healthcare professionals and that the failings reported was specifically with regards to the self-inflicted harm, highlighting that there is a need to give support to the health care professionals to be with their work so that they can work with individuals who are victims of self-harm (Crawford, Turnbull & Wessely 1998, P. 18–22). From the review, it can be said that the consensus within the papers is that training and education are paramount in the provision of healthcare services for people who have done self-harm. However, with the present climate of finance the department of health has been forced to reduce budgets and this means it is unlikely that at present, the training being offered will be made a must as it was suggested by the NICE (2004) guidance. Despite this, adequate research must be done to continue supporting the need for such training and thus making the services being rendered to the consumers fit for the intended purposes. It is also vital to note that the users of the services had a feeling to note that despite them being educated and thus the education they were receiving had a great impact, and it was making some great differences, it was not at all bringing any solution to their problems entirely. Ham (2009, P. 1760) offered the best reasons for this in the professional of healthcare desires in solving problems to situations. However, this is not always possible to achieve in the real situation. The consumers of the services help in defining the resolutions and not the professionals of healthcare alone; this is within the principles of recovery underpinning contemporary services of mental health. In such cases, communication skills remain very vital tools. They are taught as an important component within the training if healthcare professionals and the users of the services within the discussed papers tend to be requesting the fundamental skills of communication as being the minimum. Since compassion appears to be the exception because it is being valued, offered and respected but should be essential within all the healthcare services that are being provided. This information can be used by healthcare professionals to ensuring that these core skills in communication are being employed and used as a minimum standard of care for the victims who have inflicted self-harm to themselves. Bosman and Meijel (2008) review offers their suggestion that professional of healthcare understanding on self-harm and the interventions are totally different compared to the consumers of the healthcare services and by taking adequate time to communicate with one another a conclusion that is more satisfying could be found in the end. In addition to this being aware of the users of services led the literature and the sources of information to ensure that healthcare staffs are aware of the areas that are common resulting to dissatisfaction (Carnwell & Daly 2001, P. 57–63). The professionals of healthcare can use this awareness to reflecting their provision of health care to ensuring that there is possible deliverance of quality care. This may also prove to be useful for the initial part of the assessment including the discussion with the healthcare service consumers on the care received on the hospitals attended previously. This is intended to ensure that the plans of care are based on what has been considered to be useful in the past as well as in highlighting what might be causing dissatisfaction in the provision of care for the individuals who are receiving the care (Brunero & Stein-Parbury 2008, P. 86–94). Conclusion This review wholly focused on the healthcare personnel’s attitudes towards the act of self-harming, what the main factors are influencing such attitudes and the perceptions of healthcare services that have been received by the consumers of such services being offered. What has become more open from the literature where the information has been retrieved is that there exist some clear discrepancies between what the consumers of the services and the professionals of healthcare view as being either positive or negative. The analysis is with reference to attitude and its effects in provision of healthcare services (Algunik & Palmer 2008, P. 14–17). It is also suggested that healthcare professionals are not necessarily meant to be receiving the needed and appropriate training as well as support to ensuring healthcare services are improved, despite several of the papers where the information was retrieved getting published following the recommendation of the NICE. This has to be put into consideration and get addressed in order to ensure that good and best-quality healthcare services for the consumers is being provided to helping the individuals in managing their self-inflicted harm. References Algunik D. & Palmer L. (2008) Reaching Out. Emergency Nurse 16, 14–17. Bosman M. & van Meijel B. (2008) Perspectives of Mental health professionals and patients on Self-injury in psychiatry: a literature review. Achieves of Psychiatric Nursing 22, 180– 189. Brunero S. & Stein-Parbury J. (2008) The effectiveness of clinical supervision in nursing: and evidence based literature review. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing 25, 86–94. Available at: http://www.ajan.com.au/Vol25/AJAN_25-3 Carnwell R. & Daly W. (2001) Strategies for a critical review of the literature. Nurse Education in Practice 1, 57–63. Crawford M., Turnbull G. & Wessely S. (1998) Deliberate selfharm assessment by accident and emergency staff- an intervention study. 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