Integrating psychosocial skills into a medical-surgical curriculum in a baccalaureate nursing program

With the increasing acuity levels of hospitalized patients, faculty members struggle with accessing clinical sites for undergraduate students. Teaching students how to interact with patients and their families can often take second place to attending to the many needs and safety issues in caring for acutely ill individuals, particularly in medical-surgical settings. Over the past several years, the psychiatric and medical-surgical faculty members in the nursing department of a college in Boston have struggled with how best to prepare students for both the physical and psychosocial aspects of care. In this article, the evolution of our psychiatric consultation-liaison model is discussed.