Characteristics of Psychiatric Patients Who Utilize Public Health Nursing Services

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Abstract
Three hundred twelve unselected post-hospitalized psychiatric patients were potential candidates for public health nursing service. Two questions were asked. Is there a difference between the sociomedical characteristics of patients who accept nursing service versus patients who refuse? Is there a difference between patients maintained (complete at least 3 visits) and patients not maintained (received less than 3 visits) in terms of their sociomedical characteristics ? Variables studied were: race, sex, age, religion, marital status, education, occupation, social class, diagnosis, type of household released to, previous hospitalization, status of nursing service and status of hospital discharge. All tests were two-tailed and only differences with p equal to or smaller than 0.05 were considered significant. Four characteristics significantly differentiated the group of patients who accepted from those who refused service: diagnosis, status of nursing service, race and age. The maintained group differed from the not maintained group for the variables of: marital status, sex, education, type of household released to and diagnosis. Recommendations for improvement of the nursing service were made in light of these findings.

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