Community psychiatric nursing with non-psychotic patients: relating process to outcome

The aim of this study was to investigate the community psychiatric nursing (CPN) process with non-psychotic patients and to relate various constructs of the initial assessment interview to final patient outcome. The overall purpose of the research was to provide future directions for CPN training. This study used a repeated measures design, assessing patients at pre- and post-intervention on various scales to obtain outcome data. These clients were referred by general practitioners to community psychiatric nurses working in primary health care settings. The first contact session was video recorded (n = 8). Process measures were derived from these recordings using two independent expert raters using several process measures. Anxiety, depression and 'psychiatric caseness' indices all related to various process constructs (R(s) > or = 0.69). These results are based on correlations of a small sample, and the evidence suggests that a poor initial interview has a negative weighting on patient outcomes. This first interview may be related to the CPN skill base. CPN training may need to incorporate a module on structured assessment techniques. This study concludes that it is possible to conduct action research successfully within this field.