ABSTRACT
It is necessary to relate the concern for an ethnographic approach to psychiatric nurses in particular. This chapter considers the implications of culture for nursing, and to apply these to psychiatric nursing. The points made so far relate to nurses' attitudes to patient care, and to the overall nursing situation, although their application to psychiatric nursing can be seen. Many nurses training and working in this country are from different cultures, intending either to remain here working in the British culture or to return to their own people with a British approach to health and health care. Nursing in the United States of America has been more aware of cultural aspects of mental illness, and the importance of anthropology in the knowledge base of nursing in general. Brown has highlighted some of the differences in mental illness as expressed by American Indian patients.
