Swedish forensic nursing care: nurses' professional contributions and educational needs.

Nurses (registered nurses, RN, and licensed mental nurses, LMN) working in five Swedish forensic psychiatric units filled in a questionnaire designed for general psychiatric nursing, but modified for forensic use. In this report, data regarding how nursing care could contribute to improved care and the organizational changes needed and what knowledge the nurses need, in order to be able to meet the demands in the future, were analysed by means of content analysis. The salient findings were: (i) an interpersonal patient-nurse relationship based on trust, empathy, respect and responsibility for the patients' personal resources and knowledge seems to be the essence of nursing care and a way to improve care; and (ii) the nurses' educational needs emanate from different treatment modalities, how to perform different treatments, how to establish developing relationships and in-service training adapted to the ward-specific problems.