The closure of a major psychiatric hospital

Summary

A political decision to decentralize psychiatric care in a province in Sweden was arrived at in October 1984, leading to the closing down of the only psychiatric hospital in the area (290,000 inh.). The hospital is of the traditional type with 490 beds and 1,294 staff. It has units for long-term care, short-term care and rehabilitation, as well as a unit for research and education. The psychogeriatric patients are to be transferred to their home districts. All of the psychogeriatric staff have been guaranteed new jobs under the auspices of the County Council's medical services. This study is concerned with the nursing staff's reactions to the decentralization and the kind of problems they were faced with. A questionnaire was sent to all nursing staff, and for the psychogeriatric unit (199 patients) the personnel turnover was also registered. The results show that the greatest problems for the nursing staff were the splitting up of their working teams and having to establish relations with new colleagues. They were also worried about longer and more expensive journeys to new places of work. Most of the nursing staff considered the information given about the consequences of the political decision very poor. More than half of the nursing staff (54%) thought the patients would be provided with better care by decentralized psychiatric health services. Many stated that the decision had affected them so that their interest in further education (37%) and in working in a new type of psychiatric care (43%) had increased. It was also found that a great many of the nursing staff, the well-educated staff especially, fled the hospital for new jobs elsewhere, and this brought about great recruitment problems.