Psychiatric Nursing -- Quo Vadis?

34.000 trained psychiatric nurses, and further, that a mere 6 per cent of these work as community psychiatric nurses. A very simple sum therefore shows that if all hospitals in this country were to close, around 30.000 trained nurses would need to be redeployed in alternative community set tings. Thus the bulk of the psychiatric nursing work-force is working in large hospitals looking after, variously. chronically institutionalized schizophrenics, elderly people with senile dementia and the new long-stay. Mann and Creehave estimated that this latter group are composed of