Perceptions and Enhancement Needs of Psychiatric Nurses on Patient Safety Competency: A Phenomenological Study

INTRODUCTION: Patient safety competency among nurses is increasingly emphasized, yet research on patient safety competency among psychiatric nurses remains scarce. AIM: To deeply explore the cognition of psychiatric nurses on patient safety competency and explore the demands of nurses for enhancing patient safety competency. METHODS: The study was conducted from June to July 2025 with 16 psychiatric nurses. Data were collected through in-depth personal interviews and thematic analyzed using Colaizzi's seven-step phenomenological analysis method. RESULTS: Three main themes and 13 subthemes are formed: (1) The connotation of patient safety competency, including "protecting one's own safety is the prerequisite for ensuring patient safety," "understanding patients," "observation," "nurse-patient communication," "nurse-patient relationship," and "handling adverse events;" (2) influencing factors of patient safety competency, including "manpower resources," "leadership," "teamwork," and "adverse event management system;" and (3) the demand for improvement of patient safety competency, such as "emphasize theory over practice," "outdated training content and monotonous formats," and "desire for more experience sharing." CONCLUSIONS: This study conducted an in-depth investigation into the connotation, influencing factors and improvement demands of patient safety competency among nurses in the field of mental health, revealing the specificity of psychiatric nurses' perceptions of patient safety competency. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: This provides a basis for health administration departments and hospital managers to develop relevant on-the-job training programs and intervention strategies to enhance the patient safety competency of psychiatric nurses, thereby improving the quality of nursing care and delivering superior services to patients. It holds practical significance for the optimization of specialized psychiatric nursing and even the broader healthcare field.