Resident characteristics and staff behavior in two hospitals for mentally retarded adults

Results of part of a study aimed at evaluating the implications of different nurse staffing levels were reported. Two samples of 30 patients were observed in the two hospitals and measures were obtained of the proportion of time they were involved in adaptive and maladaptive activities, the frequency with which they interacted in particular ways with the nursing staff, and their Adaptive Behavior Scale scores. When these various measures were examined, we found that those patients who needed more attention received it but not necessarily of the appropriate type. While such results are understandable and even perhaps predictable, they do serve to reveal a situation deserving remedial attention. We in fact suggested that one possible means of countering this tendency to ignore the less attractive patients is for the nursing staff to be assigned much smaller groups of patients than is customary.