Hospital Experience and Recovery Orientation Among Psychiatric Home-Visit Nurses: A Cross-Sectional Study

Recovery-oriented care is central to community mental health. Among psychiatric home-visit nurses in Japan, prior psychiatric hospital experience or recovery-related training is commonly required; however, their relationship with recovery-oriented attitudes remains unclear.

To examine the association between years of psychiatric hospital work experience and recovery-oriented attitudes and knowledge among psychiatric home-visit nurses.

In this nationwide cross-sectional web survey of nurses from 1,500 randomly selected agencies, data from 237 registered nurses were analyzed after excluding licensed practical nurses and cases with missing or implausible values. Recovery attitudes and knowledge were assessed using the Japanese 7-item Recovery Attitudes Questionnaire (RAQ) and the Japanese 16-item Recovery Knowledge Inventory (RKI-16). Linear regressions examined associations between years of psychiatric hospital experience and recovery attitudes and knowledge, adjusting for age, sex, home-visit nursing experience, adequacy of agency education, and academic background. An exploratory subgroup analysis compared psychiatric-specialized and general agencies.

Years of hospital experience were not associated with recovery attitudes or knowledge in the fully adjusted models (RAQ: B = 0.04, p = 0.232; RKI-16: B = -0.09, p = 0.176). Hospital experience was positively associated with RAQ Beliefs score (B = 0.05, p = 0.029), although the effect size was modest. Exploratory analyses showed higher RAQ but lower RKI-16 scores in psychiatric-specialized versus general agencies.

Inpatient experience may reinforce belief in recovery, whereas psychiatric hospital tenure alone may be insufficient to explain the broader recovery-oriented attitudes or recovery knowledge.