Staffing of adult psychiatric inpatient facilities

Administrators who have studied the relationship between facility staffing levels and quality of care have been frustrated by problems in defining case load and organizational structure. To help eliminate ambiguity, the authors propose criteria for setting staffing levels for several types of inpatient wards in public psychiatric facilities, based on reporting, observation, and analysis of daily tasks performed by staff at an adult psychiatric center with 600 patients. Definitions of understaffing, minimal staffing, and optimal staffing are proposed.