The assessment of therapeutic attitudes in the psychiatric setting

Although 'attitude change' is included as one of the aims of the 1982 training syllabus for psychiatric nurses, curriculum designers are given little guidance as to what constitute desirable attitudes in the psychiatric nurse, and how those attitudes are to be assessed and evaluated. This study has three aims: to attempt to outline what might count as desirable attitudes; to propose a theoretical framework for the measurement of those attitudes; and to devise a test instrument and pilot it on three groups with differing amounts of counselling skills and experience. The outcome of the pilot study produced surprising results, leading to the tentative hypothesis that counselling training and/or experience may have a detrimental effect on so-called 'therapeutic attitudes' in the nurse.