Initial Psychometric Evaluation of the Staff Perception of the Disruptive Patient Behavior Scale.

Objective: The aim of this study is to develop and psychometrically test the Staff Perception of Disruptive Patient Behavior (SPDPB) Scale.

Background: Disruptive patient behaviors impact work safety for nurses in hospitals. There is no standardized approach to capturing staff perceptions of these behaviors.

Is your medical/surgical patient withdrawing from alcohol?

Look beyond the stereotype. Any hospitalized patient could be dependent on alcohol-and at risk for alcohol withdrawal syndrome.

Predicting length of stay on an acute care medical psychiatric inpatient service.

The goal of this study was to identify variables associated with length of stay (LOS) and to incorporate into the authors' routine preadmission assessment the measurement of these variables. A retrospective study of 80 discharged patients explored the association of 25 variables reflecting a mixture of patient/demographic variables, illness variables, and treatment variables with LOS. Multivariate analysis revealed that 10 variables independently accounted for 62% of the variance in LOS.

Development and application of a brief multi-faceted tool for evaluating inpatient psychiatric care.

Increasingly, hospitals are expected to monitor and document service delivery variables, such as treatment outcome and patient satisfaction with care, which are thought to be associated with the quality of care received by patients. Documenting the patient's collaboration in the treatment-planning process also has become more important. However, for many clinically oriented units, translating these expectations into a useable instrument and an efficient measurement procedure is a complex and difficult task.