A Mixed-Methods Study of Nurse Managers' Managerial and Clinical Challenges in Mental Health Centers During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Purpose: The worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has posed challenges for nurses. The aim of this study was to examine the managerial and clinical challenges of nurse managers in mental health centers during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Design: A mixed-methods study based on an analysis of data obtained in focus groups with 25 nurse managers from two mental health centers in Israel.

Personal and organizational factors related to initiative behavior among psychiatric nurses.

Purpose: To identify the degree of personal initiative (PI) among psychiatric nurses and to examine the influence of personal and organizational characteristics on their PI.

Design And Methods: Ninety-seven nurses completed a questionnaire on PI, work climate, self-efficacy toward initiatives and innovations, nursing work environment, and actual initiative at work.

Findings: Differences in actual initiative at work according to the level of education, and negative association between PI and age were found.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Ethical and Professional Dilemmas in a Psychiatric Hospital Under Missile Attacks.

Background: Israeli hospitals must continuously develop various mechanisms to protect both patients and staff against the physical threat of missile attacks during war situations.

Objectives: To examine the difficulties and dilemmas with which the staff of a psychiatric hospital had to deal during missile attacks.

Design: A quality improvement project consisting of three stages (1) establishment of a steering committee; (2) execution of a staff nurses' focus group; and (3) categorization of issues raised and suggestions for care improvement in future emergencies.

Nurses Teaching Prison Officers: A Workshop to Reduce the Stigmatization of Prison Inmates With Mental Illness.

Purpose: This report describes and evaluates the effectiveness of a nurse-led workshop designed to improve correctional officers' stigmatizing attitude toward inmates with mental illness.

Design And Methods: Eighty-three prison officers attended a 6-day workshop targeting the cognitive, psychoeducational, and behavioral components of publicly expressed stigma, and combining theoretical learning, observational experience on psychiatric wards, frontal lectures, case reviews, discussions, peer supervision, and simulations. The workshop's impact was measured systematically using a structured self-administered questionnaire examining cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of stigmatization.

Closing an open psychiatric ward: organizational change and its effect on staff uncertainty, self-efficacy, and professional functioning.

Purpose: Converting an open psychiatric ward to a closed one can be threatening and stressful for the medical and nursing staff involved. This study describes the effects of this change, in particular the before-after correlation among self-efficacy, professional functioning, and uncertainty.

Design And Methods: Forty-four staff participated, completing pre-/poststructured questionnaires.

'Let me tell you what I really think about you'--evaluating nursing managers using anonymous staff feedback.

The evaluation of employees by their superiors is standard managerial practice but the value of the evaluation of superiors by their employees is much less recognized. This study describes a project where for 3 years (2000-02), in an Israeli mental health center, the Director of Nursing, clinical supervisors, ward head nurses and their deputies were evaluated by nurses and nursing aides. Feedback was gathered through anonymous questionnaires under conditions of confidentiality.

Patient rights and law: tobacco smoking in psychiatric wards and the Israeli Prevention of Smoking Act.

In August 2001, the Israeli Ministry of Health issued its Limitation of Smoking in Public Places Order, categorically forbidding smoking in hospitals. This forced the mental health system to cope with the issue of smoking inside psychiatric hospitals. The main problem was smoking by compulsorily hospitalized psychiatric patients in closed wards.

Reactions of staff members to the relocation of a psychiatric department to a new building.

This study, which was conducted in Israel, examined staff members' reactions to the relocation of three closed psychiatric wards to a new building. Participants' (N=61) levels of uncertainty were significantly higher before the relocation than they were after the relocation. In addition, a significant positive correlation was found between anxiety levels before the relocation and anxiety levels after the relocation.