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Survey of roles of community psychiatric nurses and occupational therapists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Pam Filson  and
Tony Kendrick
Pam Filson*
Affiliation:
Croydon Mental Health Services, Lena Peat Resource Centre, 32/34 Sydenham Road, Croydon CRO 2EF
Tony Kendrick
Affiliation:
General Practice and Primary Care, St George's Hospital, Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 ORE
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

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The roles of community mental health professionals may overlap and need clarifying. A survey is described of 95 occupational therapists (OT) and 200 community psychiatric nurses (CPN), of their views on their respective roles, and information on current practices. Administering medication and crisis intervention were regarded as specifically CPN roles, yet 26% of CPNs did not regularly administer medication. Half of the CPNs' clients were not chronically mentally ill, and over two-thirds of the nurses regularly carried out counselling and anxiety management. Assessing activities of daily living and work skills were seen specifically as OT tasks, yet 60% of the OTs did not usually assess work skills in practice. Roles overlapped considerably, suggesting that a more efficient approach might be to develop a generic core training for community mental health workers.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , February 1997 , pp. 70 - 73
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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