Defining therapeutic plans and purposes for psychiatric patients served by a home-visiting program

Abstract

Introduction PreTrarCa is a home-visiting program at an in-patient clinic in Lisbon, Portugal, constituted by a team of nurses, social workers and a psychologist, and managed by a psychiatrist. Objective To describe the criteria and purposes for the home-visiting program, its congruence with therapeutic plans, and patients' service satisfaction. Aims To help in defining common purposes to patients and professionals, to improve quality of care. Methods Questionnaires regarding admission criteria and purposes for the home-visiting, individualized therapeutic plans and service satisfaction were applied to patients, family, team members and psychiatrists. Results As for the individual treatment plan, symptom control and better treatment adherence were frequently mentioned by patients, family members, team members and psychiatrists (respectively, 72.22% and 47.22%, 93.75% and 93.75%, 94,44% and 91.67%, and 68.42% and 33.33%). Team members frequently mentioned control of drug adverse effects (88.89%) and psychiatrists frequently mentioned control of drug adverse effects, social integration and social skills (42.11%, 36.84%, 21.05%). As for the purposes of home-visiting, symptom control and better treatment adherence/administration of long acting injectable drugs were frequently mentioned by the majority of patients, family members, team members and psychiatrists (69.44% and 66.67%, 93.75% and 93.75%, 91.67% and 80.55%, 52.63% and 68.42%). Conclusions Patients, families, team members and psychiatrists share similar views on the individual therapeutic plans, though team members and psychiatrists give importance to some aspects that patients and their families tend not to mention. Purposes are generally congruent with treatment plans, which may signal satisfactory communication between all these elements.