Aim: To gather information on the need for educating psychiatric patients and their families by the nursing staff.
Method: An anonymous questionnaire was especially constructed for this study. 628 nurses who worked in different health institutions (except for psychiatric departments) were asked to answer the questionnaire.
Results: Getting the patient ready for functioning in the normal world and showing him ways to cope with the illness were considered as the most important educational themes. It is disturbing to note that 14.01% of the responders did not answer this question at all. According to the nurses, the families should be educated well on how they should deal with their ill member. Most of those questioned declared a readiness to educate the ill, but only 31.8% of them felt only minimally prepared for the task. The best form of learning to be an educator were (according to 79.7% responders) training seminars in the preferable form of talks, lectures or lessons. The medical doctor should be the one who would help in the educational role.
Conclusions: The majority of the nurses believe that they are not prepared well enough for this educational function. Only 4.5% of those studied did not show any need for educating patients and their families. Training seminars for nurses should be organized, so that the nurses feel competent to educate patients and their families. Interdisciplinary teams dealing with the issue of educating patients and their families should be formed.