[Advanced nursing practice: a must for the quality of care and mental health services].

New professional legislation and reorganization of mental health services have had a significant influence on mental health nursing practice. Many nurses have demonstrated clinical leadership and have been able to adapt their services to the needs of the population specially in the primary health care setting. However, many believe that the role of nurses is not sufficiently known and optimally utilized in mental health services.

Development and validation of the RQC: a daily contact log for ACT and ICM teams.

Aim: Instruments to measure the process--the daily activities of home care workers--have received little attention and may impede research in refining the active ingredients, the clientele best served and continuous quality improvement. We developed a decade ago in Quebec, Canada, a new daily contact log (relevé quotidien des contacts or RQC) that has now reached in practice 1 million entries.

Methods: Three features distinguish the RQC development, namely, practical ergonomics, a clear logic, and response categories easy to understand and retain.

Evaluating life in foster homes for persons with serious mental illness: Resident and caregiver perspectives.

Background: In Montreal Canada, the majority of persons with serious mental illness discharged from psychiatric hospitals were placed into foster homes. Very little updated information exists on life in foster homes, and the level of autonomy allowed in this residential setting.

Aims: The purpose of the study was to elicit the foster home residents' opinions about their lives in this setting and their caregiver's perception of the level of autonomy allowed.

Developing a model of recovery in mental health.

Background: The recovery process is characterized by the interaction of a set of individual, environmental and organizational conditions common to different people suffering with a mental health problem. The fact that most of the studies have been working with schizophrenic patients we cannot extend what has been learned about the process of recovery to other types of mental problem. In the meantime, the prevalence of anxiety, affective and borderline personality disorders continues to increase, imposing a significant socioeconomic burden on the Canadian healthcare system and on the patients, their family and significant other 1.

Building life around foster home versus moving on: the competing needs of people living in foster homes.

Objective: This article reports findings on the competing needs of people living in psychiatric foster homes in Montreal, Canada.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 33 residents. Consumers describe the tensions associated with foster home life.

From the real frontline: the unique contributions of mental health caregivers in Canadian foster homes.

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study on the contribution of foster home caregivers for people with serious mental illness. Traditionally, social workers have played a key role in the supervision of foster homes. Little is known about how the help caregivers provide is similar to, or different from, that provided by mental health professionals.

Recovery as perceived by people with schizophrenia, family members and health professionals: a grounded theory.

Background: Advances in knowledge in the biomedical and psychosocial sciences have expanded our understanding of schizophrenia and of how it evolves in people living with it. These individuals are no longer viewed as being 'ill' and requiring long-term hospitalisation. We have come instead to have a much more positive view of them and of the role they can play in coming to terms both with their health condition and with society.

The values and qualities of being a good helper: a qualitative study of adult foster home caregivers for persons with serious mental illness.

Background: Canadian foster homes for adults with serious mental illness are operated by non-professional caregivers, usually women, whose mandate is to support residents and reintegrate them into the community. While mental health professionals recognize that adult foster homes are an important service for this population, there is little understanding of how caregivers impact on the lives of their residents.

Aims And Objectives: This article draws on the findings of a larger study which examined both caregiver and resident perspectives on the helping relationship in adult foster homes.

Intrusion errors in explicit memory: their differential relationship with clinical and social outcome in chronic schizophrenia.

Introduction: Memory deficits might account for clinical and adaptive differences between groups of patients with chronic schizophrenia. We investigated the qualitative factors of memory that influence clinical and social status.

Methods: Psychosocial functioning, clinical symptoms, and memory function were assessed in 99 patients at four time points over a 16-month period using recall scores for semantically related words, unrelated words, paired associated learning, and word span.

Adaptation of wives to prostate cancer following diagnosis and 3 months after treatment: a test of family adaptation theory.

Background: Prostate cancer challenges not only the men with the disease, but also their partners. Existing studies have focused on the relationship between type of treatment and sexual and urinary function in men, with recent qualitative work suggesting that men and their spouses have differing responses to the illness. Factors predicting women's adaptation to prostate cancer have not been examined.

A dimensional structure of nurse-patient interactions from a caring perspective: refinement of the Caring Nurse-Patient Interaction Scale (CNPI-Short Scale).

Aim: This paper reports the development of a short version of the Caring Nurse-Patient Interaction Scale.

Background: Since the 1980s several instruments have been developed to assess external aspects of caring. They involve using an inductive process of knowledge development to investigate the underlying structure of caring, and few reflect an explicit underlying caring theory.

The impact of a family systems nursing educational program on the practice of psychiatric nurses: a pilot study.

A pilot study was conducted to examine the impact of a Family Systems Nursing educational program on the practice of psychiatric nurses and to explore the nurses' perceptions of the educational program. One year after the program, six nurses were asked to complete logbooks and to participate in an individual semistructured interview based on open-ended questions and on the critical incident approach to describe their family nursing interventions and to explore their perceptions on how the educational program influenced their practice of family nursing care. Content analyses indicated that participant nurses integrated systemic family interventions in their practice and were satisfied with the program.

Factorial validation of a French short-form of the Working Alliance Inventory.

Evaluation of the therapeutic alliance is crucial for understanding the therapeutic process and its results. However, few instruments are available in French. This article aims to validate a French short form of the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI).

[Foster home caregivers' point of view on the transformation of mental health services in Québec].

This article presents the major findings from a study that examined foster home caregivers' views on the impact of the transformation of mental health services on caregivers and their work with persons with serious mental illness. In Québec foster homes, (or more commonly known as foster families), represent one of the oldest models of community based housing for persons with serious mental illness. In fact, the emergence of the first foster home dates back to the 1950ies.

[Recovery from persons living with schizophrenia].

The study gives a theoretical explanation of how people living with schizophrenia recover. The 41-participant study (clients, family and health professional) was conducted using the grounded theory approach, in three different settings. Based on analyses of the empirical data, the authors identified seven closely interrelated categories defining the participants' experiences and came up with a theory explaining how certain individuals manage to recover.

Assessing nurse-patient interactions from a caring perspective: report of the development and preliminary psychometric testing of the Caring Nurse--Patient Interactions Scale.

While there is a large body of literature regarding caring in nursing and some measurement tools addressing the concept have been developed, limitations of existing instruments constrain theory-driven research on nurse-patient interactions. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and initial psychometric evaluation of the Caring Nurse-Patient Interactions Scale in a sample of 332 nurses and nursing students. The tool intended to facilitate research on the links between caring and patient outcomes.

The construct validity of the client questionnaire of the Wisconsin Quality of Life Index--a cross-validation study.

The Wisconsin Quality of Life Index (W-QLI, Becker, Diamond and Sainfort, 1993) consists of eight scales: satisfaction with life domains, occupational activities, symptoms, physical health, social relations/support, finances, psychological wellbeing, and activities of daily living. The W-QLI has been modified to fit the characteristics of the Canadian population, the universal Canadian health system, and community and social services in Canada and the modified form was named CaW-QLI (Diaz, Mercier, Hachey, Caron, and Boyer, 1999). This study will verify the empirical basis of these theoretical dimensions by applying a cross-validation procedure on two samples, most of whose subjects have a serious mental illness.

Determinants of expressed emotion in mothers of schizophrenia patients.

Our objectives were to determine the extent to which symptoms in the schizophrenia patient and personality in the mother lead to a sense of subjective burden in the mother, and to explain variance in two components of Expressed Emotion. Data on symptom severity (PANSS), mothers' personality (NEO-PI), subjective burden (SBAS), and Expressed Emotion (CFI) were gathered from 41 schizophrenia outpatients and their mothers. Approximately one quarter of the variance in Critical Comments (CCs) and Emotional Overinvolvement (EOI) was explained using path analysis.

Factor structure of the Multnomah Community Ability Scale.

More and more, Intensive Community Treatment programs in Canada use questionnaires to evaluate the health and social functioning of individuals suffering from a severe mental illness. However, seldom are these tools subject to psychometric analyses to establish their validity on independent samples. This article presents the results of the validation of the French version of the Multnomah Community Ability Scale.