Exploring secondary traumatic stress experienced by nurses working in mental health service in Rwanda

It has been suggested that a unique feature of some mental health nurses’ work is exposure through their role as therapists to clients’ descriptions of, and reactions to, trauma, and that these experiences may actually indirectly cause distress and traumatization to the nurse. This proposed phenomenon has been termed “secondary traumatic stress”. The focus of this paper is to explore secondary traumatic stress experienced by nurses working in mental health services in Rwanda. The research was conducted in Ndera Psychiatric Hospital.