The psychogeriatric nurse's decision-making process in a mental hospital

This article looks at the psychogeriatric nurse's decision-making process in a mental hospital. The subjects consist of 26 nurses working on the psychogeriatric wards of one hospital. The data were collected by a questionnaire (N = 26), content analysis of nursing plans (N = 56), and observation of nursing plans meetings (N = 15). The results on the different phases of the decision-making process suggested that nurses had little difficulty with the identification of problems. Data collection tended to concentrate on the physical side of nursing work. The setting of explicit targets for nursing care proved to be difficult. The vast majority of the nurses (85%) felt that decision-making on different nursing alternatives was only moderately or not at all successful. Over half of the nurses felt that their ability to evaluate the outcome of treatment and nursing was either satisfactory or poor.