Nursing diagnosis vs goal-oriented treatment planning in inpatient child psychiatry

The sharp rise in acute psychiatric beds for children and youth has opened up practice opportunities for child psychiatric nurses. But there is pressure from third party payers to reduce the length of stay on these services which increases demand for effective and efficient care. Timely evaluation, stabilization and discharge of children requires multidisciplinary teamwork. This paper considers the merit of nursing diagnosis in this setting and compares it to a method of multidisciplinary goal setting. The use of nursing diagnoses in child inpatient psychiatry carries some risk of creating parallel systems of care and isolating nurses from the treatment team.