[Continuing education through guidance--experiences with a continuing education programme related to practice,...

The article reports on the setting-up of a continuing education programme related to practice, applicable in particular to nursing personnel of long-time wards in a large psychiatric hospital. The article describes the prerequisites of "continuing education within the framework of the hospital itself", organised in various sub-sections such as guidelines for group work with patients on the wards, and topic-centered continuing education groups for co-workers. The planning and execution of group work is demonstrated by means of model examples. The assumption that continuing education can help to change the atmosphere prevalent in wards and can also change the degree of activation of the patients, has been confirmed by the experience collected so far. This illuminates once again the need for practice-related continuing education an subject-specific further training for psychiatric nursing staff, even though in the long-term therapeutic field, possibilities of rehabilitation may probably gain more ground in psychiatric treatment of the future.