Physician-Nurse Issues
Abstract
(5),have identified situations in the thenapeutic milieu that appear most distressing to the patients. The study provides impetus to produce an instrument appropriate for future predictive studies that can relate hospital stresslevels to adaptational outcomes such as symptom improvement and length ofhospital stay.JOEL Dr.GOLDBERG,PH.D.ment, advocacy, and patient education, are independent nursing functions that require a specific knowledge of nursing science. I disagree with Dr. Frosch when he states that the issues between psychiatrist and nurse ârarely interfere with patient care.â Nursing, like all professions, is interdependent with other disciplines; however, when constraints are imposed on professional nurses, such as limiting their scope of practice or discounting discipline-specific knowledge, the pa-to put aside (but not internecine battling to attend to the immediate clinical needs ofa particular sick on suffering patient. My own experience at several institutions in more than 30 years of interdisciplinary practice suggests that the ability to do this is the rule rather than the exception.up) ourA.FROSCH,M.D.Goldberg is an assistant professor in the department ofpsychiatry at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and clinical director of the Hamilton Program forSchizophrenia. References1. GoffmanDoubleday, 2.E: Asylums. 1961City,NY,of theMoos R, Houts P: The assessment social atmospheres of psychiatric JournalofAbnormal Psychologytient is