176 duties and responsibilities. The PNs recommended the following support programme to assist with their caring duties and responsibilities.
177 members of the mentally ill patients contribute by maintaining continuous contact with the patients. They can call the patients, visit them, and take them home for leave of absence and home visits. Still in terms of family support, PNs think financial support from the families can be beneficial to patients. This financial support can be in the form of money and presents. For instance, the family members can bring home-cooked food and toiletries for patients at every visit. These PNs are optimistic and believe that some teamwork between nurses and family members is crucial and will definitely be beneficial to patients.
6.7.2 Support by Colleagues and Supervisors
As stated earlier, PNs alluded to having insufficient support from MDT members and from the management of the institutions. As a result, they appealed to their colleagues and supervisors to support them and to be more active about in-patient care. The PNs indicated that their colleagues (MDT) can offer support by doing ward rounds with them, see patients when they refer them, counsel them and many more. The PNs who participated stated that their managers do not consider their well-being. They viewed the hospital management team as unsupportive in term of ensuring that resources were always available to provide adequate healthcare to the patients. These nurses long for and need support from their managers, which can be in the form of words, and by hiring more staff.
The managers can also portray gratitude and support by showing interest in the well- being of nurses; not only of patients. Nurses would be ecstatic to receive attention and to hear from the management of these hospitals. Actually, these PNs would like to see an improvement in the area of communication. According to these PNs, management should listen to them and consult with them before making major changes and decisions. The professional nurses suggested some form of support and motivation by management would make a huge difference in the workplace. Some professional nurses stated that the multidisciplinary team requires some strengthening and learn to work together with other stakeholders.
More often than not nurses were commonly seeking informal support from their families, friends and colleagues (Zhang et al., 2021). According to these findings, Zhou et al.
178 (2017) found that informal assistance from friends and family serves as a person's primary source of support while dealing with stress, with formal support typically only being sought after informal support has failed. One possible explanation for this is because one of the most direct and convenient forms of support for nurses is assistance from family and friends. Peer support in professional atmospheres is seen as a productive method. Regarding formal support, nurses revealed their deep desire emotional help and support from managers. Nurses are discouraged by the absence of consistent assistance from supervisors following a distressing event. Additionally, managers who consistently accuse nurses without providing any supporting evidence cause secondary harm to nurses and underreport violent episodes. Post-incident counseling is advised by nurses since it is necessary as a significant intervention to lessen the negative effects of the incidents. Like the law, judicial institutions are beneficial to victims of abuse (Zhang, et al., 2021). According to Hassankhani et al., organizational support is crucial (2018).
6.7.3 Financial Support
Another kind of support that PNs recommended is financial support. From the responses of these nurses, they would appreciate financial support in the form of money or incentives. They somehow feel underpaid. These PNs would like to see their overtime and Sunday lunch incentives reinstated. Participants in the current study acknowledged that their supervisors have nothing to do with their incentives cut, but felt that they should have been informed of such change. The PNs would appreciate if the government can consider their hard work and compensate them accordingly.
6.7.4 Psychological Support
The PNs participating in this study recommended psychological support as a support programme that will help them cope better with caring duties and responsibilities.
According to these nurses, talking about their challenges to an expert is vital and beneficial. There were three PNs who sought private psychological services to deal with their personal challenges and were able to get help; as a result they recommend it. The other reason for the request for psychological services is because most PNs advocate the importance of the mental well-being of patients, so they also see the requirement to
179 look after one's own mental wellbeing. This psychological support programme that they have in mind can be in the form of counselling, debriefing, and therapy. The PNs mentioned that the counselling sessions can be done, preferably in a group; and that personal sessions can be done individually. Venting and talking about their work-related problems should be the main focus of the psychological support programme, so they say. According to these nurses, this psychological support programme can be held once a month or bimonthly. It will be subject to the therapist’s schedule. The sessions can be conducted either in the ward, or hall, or whatever place is convenient to PNs and the therapist.
6.7.5 General Social Support
Besides the above-mentioned support programmes, PNs require the need for consistent general social support to deal with their caring duties and responsibilities. In this study the general social support needed includes having staff outings, exercising, and playing sports. These nurses believe strongly that the examples stated above of general social support will help to improve their mood and will ultimately enhance their mental well- being. These PNs would like to have some time outside of their workplace to socialise as colleagues. This is confirmed by a study by Al-Sagarat et al. (2017), which found that practicing favorite hobbies outside of work and realizing that life is wonderful, fun, interesting, and worthwhile outside of work were the most common coping methods used by psychiatric nurses.