“Holding the line”—relationship building and challenges when nursing adults with a severe eating disorder

Eating disorders (EDs) are serious psychiatric disorders that may cause great suffering and reduced quality of life. Severe EDs often lead to somatic complications and have a high mortality rate. The most seriously ill patients need hospitalisation, with a need for highly trained nurses.

The aim of the study was to investigate challenges when nursing adults with a severe ED, and how to succeed in establishing a therapeutic relationship. A qualitative design was chosen, and individual qualitative interviews conducted with twelve nurses. The analytic method was Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis.

Six main themes were developed: entering the patient’s world of experience (with the subthemes: understanding the patient’s anxiety, understanding the patient's rigidity and need for control and understanding the patient's ambivalence), providing somatic nursing, building relationships, ‘holding the line’ (with the subtheme: demanding and rewarding), manoeuvring between rules and frameworks and providing good nursing care during coercive treatment.

Nursing patients with a severe ED is demanding, requiring somatic as well as psychiatric expertise. The nurse must understand the patient's anxiety, rigidity and need for control, and ambivalence. Nursing patients with a severe ED requires clarity, and steadiness and the nurses must cope with resistance. To succeed, teamwork and support from colleagues are needed.