recovery (Hsu et al., 2012). Compassion involves empathy and concern and, in nursing, is both a resource and a necessity (Mills, Wand, & Fraser, 2015), but it can also become an obstacle to overcome. Considering the vulnerability of patients and the demands on the nurses who see to their care, compassion is arguably nursing's greatest value (Halifax, 2014). Compassion is also a principal component of caring for patients who suffer from mental illness (Crawford et al., 2014), and nursing is based upon compassionate encounters with others, even in challenging situations (Chang et al., 2005). However, striving away from paternalism and towards compassion can be especially challenging in forensic inpatient care units (Young, 2018). Nurses working in forensic psychiatry https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnu.2020.07.027 Received 5 March 2020; Received in revised form 11 May 2020; Accepted 22 July 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Mid Sweden University, Holmgatan 10, 851 70 Sundsvall, Sweden. E-mail addresses: lars.hammarstrom@miun.se (L. Hammarström), siri.a.devik@nord.no (S.A. Devik), ove.hellzen@miun.se (O. Hellzén), marie.haggstrom@miun.se (M. Häggström). Archives of Psychiatric Nursing 34 (2020) 435–441 Available online 23 July 2020 0883-9417/ © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). often struggle to remain empathetic and provide compassionate care; thus they risk depersonalizing the nurse-patient relationship (Sturzu et al., 2019). The forensic psychiatric environment involves working with patients who often oppose care (Selvin et al., 2016). Rushton et al. (2009), asked, “How can nursing be based upon, and continue to be based on, compassion when facing the multifaceted and complex encounters in today's care?” For example, how does one access compassion when caring for offenders who may have abused children and whose expressions of suffering involve a longing and affinity with catastrophic consequences (Sjögren, 2004). Forensic care also means facing aggressive patients and intimidations (Greer et al., 2019), feeling unsafe, and, at times, having your very existence threatened (Hörberg et al., 2012). Coping with stress affects wellbeing and when facing threats people instinctively focus on self-defense (Crawford et al., 2014). Interfacing with aggressive patients can awaken emotions such as anger, fear, grief, and humiliation (Carlsson et al., 2006), posing challenges to sustained compassion. Hence, emotional regulation may influence encounters and nurses' behaviors towards patients within a forensic setting (Oostvogels et al., 2018). Forensic nurses who face perplexing behaviors need to manage emotions to avoid resorting to restrictive strategies that could infringe on a patient's freedom and involvement (Davies et al., 2016). Helping nurses understand themselves may provide them with insights that allow them to empathize a patient, regardless of challenging behaviors, see the patient is a person (Oostvogels et al., 2018), and gain greater insight into the patient's lifeworld (Hörberg, 2018). To support the wellbeing of psychiatric nurses and ensure the quality of care for patients, further understanding and clarification of the concept of compassion are needed (Tveit & Raustol, 2017). Therefore, the aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of nurses' compassion in providing forensic psychiatric inpatient care. Materials and methods This study employed qualitative research, as it is appropriate when exploring an issue that needs further explanation to gaining a detailed, complex understanding, derived from the stories of people (Creswell & Poth, 2018). An understanding will appear through the fusion of horizons of participant and researcher, together reaching a shared understanding (Fleming et al., 2003). A hermeneutic interpretation was used, which means the researchers reflected on the own understanding, and the knowledge upon which it is based (Gadamer, 2004) in approaching the content of the interviews. A bridge of understanding is thereby created through a hermeneutic circle where preunderstandings are constantly questioned (Gadamer, 1976). Procedure and setting This study was based on the data collected in a previous study (Hammarström et al., 2019). Narratives are unique data in that they are collected primarily for single use but can also be stored with the intent that they may be valuable for secondary use in future research. Our secondary supplementary analysis involved a more in-depth investigation of an emergent that was not fully addressed in the previous study (Heaton, 2004). The data were derived from narrative interviews with 13 participants at one forensic hospital in Sweden where nurses encounter patients, the majority of whom are male, who have been transmitted to forensic care—with a background of violent crimes—and who suffer from various mental illnesses. Participants and data collection The participants were selected using purposive sampling, with the inclusion criterion of having experience caring for patients with mental illness in forensic inpatient care. The participants' ages ranged from 28 to 67 years (median (Md) age = 36 years) and they had worked in forensic psychiatric care between 5