Background: The regulation of personnel in psychiatry (PsychPV) stipulates time requirements for all relevant activities in inpatient psychiatric care as a function of the degree of disease severity of the patients treated. The demands made on employees in psychiatric care have risen substantially in recent years. Our aim was to examine whether the standard requirements of the PsychPV cover the actual work load.
Material and methods: With the help of a multi-moment study on a general psychiatric ward we examined which activities are performed to which extent by doctors and nurses.
Results: Physicians must spend an inordinate amount of time on documentation and the nursing staff on non-patient-related tasks. The causes are the higher number of external requests and higher clinical documentation requirements. This time is lost to the direct patient contact.
Conclusion: The PsychPV requirements must be urgently adapted so that more time is again available for the direct patient contact.