Compliance versus adherence in serious and persistent mental illness.

Failure to follow prescribed treatment has devastating consequences for those who are seriously and persistently mentally ill. Nurses, therefore, try to get clients to take psychotropic medication on a long-term basis. The goal is either compliance or adherence.

Strategies nurses use to overcome medication refusal by involuntary psychiatric patients.

Nurses seem to play an important role in assisting involuntarily hospitalized psychiatric patients to accept medication. The initial aim of this study was to develop a theoretical understanding of strategies nurses use to overcome medication non-acceptance in involuntary psychiatric patients using a grounded theory approach. Interviews (n = 17) were conducted with psychiatric nurses in inpatient settings.

Justifying coercion.

A grounded theory study of psychiatric nurses' experiences of administering medication to involuntary psychiatric patients revealed a basic social process of justifying coercion. Although the 17 nurses interviewed all reported success at avoiding the use of coercion, each had an individual approach to using the nurse-patient relationship to do this. However, all the nurses used the same process to reconcile themselves to using coercion when it became necessary.