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Nurses' help in psychiatric out-patient clinics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Philip Meats*
Affiliation:
Millbrook Unit, Kings Mill Nottinghamshire NG17 4JT
Terry Ashton
Affiliation:
Millbrook Unit, Kings Mill Nottinghamshire NG17 4JT
*
Correspondence
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Increasing referrals to psychiatric clinics, combined with restricted medical manpower, require innovative ways of meeting the demands. We appointed a nurse to help in an out-patient clinic. The nurse recorded new patients' case histories and presented them to the consultant, who could then see the patients in less time. In the first 15 months the clinic saw 260 new patients, compared with 190 in the previous period. The median waiting time for appointments came down from 32.5 to 22.5 days (P=0.018). Patients reported a high level of satisfaction with seeing a nurse and a doctor.

Type
Original Papers
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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