A nurse-managed inpatient program for patients with chronic mental disorders

The deinstitutionalization movement has left a legacy of need for appropriate care for inpatients with chronic refractory mental illness. This article describes a nurse managed program for such patients based on the principles of a therapeutic milieu. The program was formally defined for a 6-month period with an effort to include outcome measures for program evaluation. Multidisciplinary treatment team planning with a psychiatric nursing clinical specialist as team leader provided a format for putting therapeutic concepts into practice. The nurse clinical specialist and two nurse practitioners served as case managers as well as primary care providers. Program evaluation showed that cost-effective quality care could be achieved with a reduction in polypharmacy and overall neuroleptic usage. The notion of a restraint appropriate environment, with the goal of minimizing restraint use, was introduced and put into practice.