Self-disclosure in adult and mental health nursing students.

Full Abstract

Self-disclosure, the process whereby people verbally reveal themselves to others, is an important interpersonal skill in initiating, developing, maintaining, and terminating therapeutic relationships. Studies of this interpersonal skill in nursing have, primarily, focused on adult nurses. They are dated, make no comparisons between this and other nursing specialisms, and have not considered the patient as a focus for nurses' self-disclosure. This study attempts to address these issues in relation to student nurses by:
replicating a previous study of self-disclosure in adult nursing students (ANS) and offering a comparison of two nursing specialisms, reporting on the use of this skill in relation to the patient. A matched sample of 25 ANS and 25 mental health nursing students (MHNS) were asked to complete a modified version of Jourard's 25-item self-disclosure questionnaire. The findings suggest that:
ANS were more self-disclosing than students sampled in an earlier study (Burnard and Morrison, 1992); both sets of students disclosed significantly less items to the patient as target-person than to other categories; and MHNS disclosed significantly more items than the ANS to the patient category.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Ashmore, Russell (R); Banks, David (D);

Affiliation: Mental Health Nursing, University of Sheffield.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: British journal of nursing (Mark Allen Publishing) (Br J Nurs), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: -2002 Feb 14-27; vol 11 (issue 3) : pp 172-7

Dates: Created 2002/02/26; Completed 2002/07/19; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 11865234, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.

See 100+ related articles.