Nursing on the Threshold: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study of General Psychiatric Nurses' Experiences of Caring for Justice‐Involved Individuals With Mental Illness

The care of justice-involved individuals with mental illness frequently extends to general psychiatric wards because of the limited dedicated forensic infrastructure. However, the lived experience of general psychiatric nurses in navigating the complex threshold between therapeutic care and risk management remains understudied. This qualitative study explored the essential meaning of general psychiatric nurses' lived experience of caring for justice-involved individuals with mental illness, using van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenological approach. In-depth one-to-one interviews were conducted with eight registered psychiatric nurses in South Korea. Data were interpreted, guided by van Manen's four lived existentials: corporeality, temporality, spatiality and relationality. The essential meaning was disclosed through an essential structure of six categories: (1) The Body Frozen Before the Criminal History, (2) Continuing Care with a Body Weighed Down by Fear, (3) A Relationship Held at a Distance, (4) The Knot of Perception Untied by Time, (5) The Sorrow of Facing a Life with Nowhere to Stay and (6) The Ward's Order Shaken by a Single Patient. Nurses continued to provide care while bearing fear inscribed on the body and maintaining a deliberate distance. They experienced a dynamic shift, coming to re-perceive the person as a human being over time. To sustain therapeutic care and protect nurses, standardised guidelines, mentoring by experienced nurses, peer support and institutional support must be established so that the burden of this care is not left to the individual nurse's struggle.