[A staff development model in psychiatric nursing]

The nursing service manager is accountable for the quality of nursing care delivered in the nursing service. It is therefore important that the nursing service manager facilitates staff development in the nursing service. It is not only the nursing service manager's responsibility to make provision for staff development--the nurse also has a responsibility in this regard. He/she should purposefully make an effort to keep up to date with the latest developments. This article focuses on the co-responsibility of the psychiatric nurse and nursing service manager regarding staff development. A model for staff development is described, in accordance with the guidelines of Dickoff, James & Wiedenbach for theory development. An inductive approach was primarily followed to describe the provisional model, after which a literature study was employed to refine and purify the model. This model was exposed to expert evaluation, after which the final model for staff development of psychiatric nurses was described. Recommendations include the testing of certain hypotheses and utilisation of this model in psychiatric nursing practice.