INDIVIDUALIZATION IN THE PRESCRIPTIONS FOR NURSING CARE OF THE PSYCHIATRIC PATIENT

Abstract

It is my purpose in this paper to describe the method that my associates and I have evolved to meet the problem of individualizing the prescriptions for nursing care of the psychiatric patient in the hospital. Physicians directing the recovery processes of the mentally sick are constantly confronted with the problem of controlling and organizing the patient's time during the intervals between personal contacts. With an average of fifty patients, under the supervision of ten full time physicians, it has been possible at this clinic for a physician to spend between thirty and sixty minutes daily with each patient. We consider it to be our opportunity as well as responsibility, however, to prescribe and supervise the management of the patient during the remaining twenty-three hours of each day, necessarily through the aid of therapeutic assistants; i. e., nurses and special therapists. The therapeutic conferences with the physician may color the