Strategies for Hospital-Wide Dissemination of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Interventions

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Abstract
An ultimate goal in the development of effective rehabilitation interventions within clinical-research contexts is the dissemination of these techniques to the “typical” treatment setting. Often however, hospital administrators at such settings either see this goal as unattainable, or do not implement a carefully integrated process of staff training and administrative support. In this paper, we describe the steps in an ongoing effort to implement psychiatric rehabilitation practices hospital-wide in a state psychiatric facility. This process has involved a number of critical components including time-limited use of outside experts, focused administrative support and quality assurance, continuing education opportunities, and the establishment of both a unit specializing in rehabilitation interventions that serves as an ongoing training environment for hospital staff, and a core group of practitioners from this program who provide regular external consultation to other hospital programs. These and other factors have led to both significant increases in staff skill levels, as well as the exporting of larger scale token economy and level systems.