Oliver H. Osborne

Intrahospital relocation of psychiatric patients and effects on aggression

Aggression is a recurring problem with psychiatric patients and can pose special problems on inpatient units. The purpose of this study were to identify changes in patients aggression as a consequence of routine individual relocation and to identify the relationship of certain variables with patterns of aggression. Using an adaptation of the Overt Aggression Scale (Yudofsky, Silver, Jackson, Endicott, & Williams, 1986), data were collected from the patient records of 201 individuals who had been admitted to a state hospital and subsequently transferred to another ward in the same hospital. There was a phase by day interaction with the day-to-day pattern of aggression in the pretransfer phase differing significantly from that in the posttransfer phase. The highest mean aggression for a single day was the day following transfer; the second highest was the day before transfer. There were main effects for age and number of hospital admissions.

Jailed mothers : further explorations in public sector nursing

1. The burgeoning population of women, particularly pregnant women, being incarcerated increases the need for psychosocial and maternal-child nurses employed in prisons. 2. The potential paradox of incarcerated women receiving better care in prisons than when free suggests the need for public sector psychosocial nurses to address issues of social justice. 3. The great majority of informants enthusiastically responded to the idea of a mother-infant corrections residential program. They suggested that more attention be given to prenatal care and preparation for labor and delivery than pregnant women historically received in prisons.

On public sector psychosocial nursing: a conceptual framework.

1. Nursing practice is driven more by its environment than by knowledge provided by faculty or even strong relationships between faculty and staff. Because that environment is publicly supported, programs reflect changes in the ideological environment. 2. The psychosocial nursing specialty incorporates psychiatric/mental health nursing and social sciences to reduce the negative environmental influences while increasing the positive ones. 3. Public sector psychosocial nurses must be familiar with changing laws and regulations as well as the history of hospital and community programs for the mentally ill; understand the complexity of society and that the state hospital is only one component of a large system; and contribute to the development of their subspecialty.

A point prevalence study of alcoholism and mental illness among downtown migrants

Since the 1960s the bulk of Americas mentally ill have been deinstitutionalized to the community. A number of these people now live in the downtown areas of large cities in close association with the established vagrant culture which includes a significant portion of alcohol abusers. The bizarre and impoverished nature of the lives of these formerly institutionalized mentally ill citizens, coupled with their propinquity to government and business establishments, creates a social policy dilemma. A point prevalence study design was used to ascertain the demographic, physical, mental illness and alcohol abuse characteristics of a sample of a vagrant population which inhabits the downtown area of an American Northwest urban community. Analysis of the data of a sample of vagrants who frequent an emergency shelter and a single residence occupancy hotel demonstrated that the two groups were similar. Participants were predominantly male, white and in their mid thirties. Forty percent had never married and over 50% were high school educated and possess labor skills. Grouped data indicates that, in view of the dearth of literature describing the relationship of mentally illness and alcohol abuse, the psychiatric and alcohol use behavior of deinstitutionalized populations requires further study.

The rise of public sector psychosocial nursing

For a number of years, the Department of Psychosocial Nursing, University of Washington, engaged in a region-wide State-University collaboration with the Division of Mental Health authorities in states of the Pacific Northwest. This collaboration provided the basis for another 12 years of a Washington State Division of Mental Health-Department of Psychosocial Nursing contract to improve nursing in the states two mental hospitals. This article describes the history, contractual relationships, and components of these projects. It concludes with a discussion of the consequences of these years of State-University cooperation, including conceptual issues, and the generation of the psychosocial nursing subspecialty, public sector psychosocial nursing.

The Way of One Nurse-Anthropologist:

In a real sense, I should not have had a career as a nurse or as an anthropologist. Along the way, I was forced to surmount such barriers as a nursing service administrator who attempted to debar me from taking the competitive New York State Regents Scholarship Examinations for graduate studies. Of the hundreds who took that test, I came out among the top 10. Then, there was the highly regarded nursing professor who advised me that I was not qualified to pursue a doctorate degree. Her counsel was reminiscent of high school advisors who counseled me against seeking admission to college. There was also my first anthropology professor who wondered at my presence in his class and idiosyncratically refused to give me a grade. I did not start out to become a nurse or an anthropologist. Indeed, I entered both arenas by mistake. They were happy mistakes . . . but they were mistakes. I entered nursing a decade before the civil rights struggles of the 60s. Opportunities for young African Americans were extremely limited. I had just finished high school and saw before me a lifetime working as a hospital clerk in a Brooklyn ghetto. Perhaps a year passed before I met my first male nurse. Within months, I entered a nursing school—not because I wanted to be a nurse. I just wanted some kind of career. Equally important, the school was in the country, and I believed that 3 years of rustic life would be most beneficial to my view of the world, myself, and my real life’s work. My brother drove me to the hospital on a sunny day in September. As we drove through the grounds, I remarked on the beauty of the place and how pleasant my 3-year sojourn there would be. Only a few moments later, I realized that I had condemned myself to 3 years in a nursing school that was part of a state mental hospital. I nearly faltered, but I had quit my job and night college and promised my brother that he could have my half of our jointly owned car. I continued on my way and, to this day, remain a psychiatric and mental health nurse. Some 10 years later, I began my second bumbling at career hunting. After completing my master’s degree in psychiatric and mental health nursing, I

Cross-cultural social science research and questions of scientific medical imperialism

Concern for the rights and safety of individuals has caused clinical researchers to develop informed consent protocols for research involving human subjects. The applicapability of these regulations to social science research is often tenuous, since such research usually focuses on populations rather than individuals, and potential damage is apt to be political rather than personal. In cross-cultural social research, the protocols developed by Western clinical researchers may be not only ludicrously inapplicable, but intrusive and disruptive within the cultural context, raising questions of the intellectual imperialism of Western research ethics.