Developing a training program for industrial personnel.

Abstract

W HEN A PR0(;RAM in patient relationships for all nonclinical personnel was recently instituted by the Department of Mental Hygiene, we found that many sections of our hospital had to come to terms on goals, purposes and methodology before we could start the program. Both clinical and business services reached an early agreement on the need, value and possibilities of such a training program. A hospital training committee was formed, consisting of the assistant superintenden t, medical services; assistant superintendent, business services; psychiatric nursing education director; chief psychologist; supervising psychiatric social worker and the personnel officer. This committee started the therapeutic program among industrial personnel with laundry workers, cooks, bakers and such food service people as assistants, supervisors and administrators. Not wishing to perpetuate the futile debate as to whether work ei se is therapeutic or not, we placed the emphasis of our training program upon the importance of tile interpersonal relationships which emerge antI which are sustained in the workaday world of patients who are assigned to work in tile laundry, bakery shop, food service departillent or elsewhere in the hospital, as a part of their treatment plan. It was hoped that this training program woulti aid in altering antitherapeutic attitudes anti encouraging positive ones. Our primary goal, therefore, was to train the hospital industrial employees who supervised working patients how to establish therapeutic relations with them. Secondary goals were many and varied; each class was different in needs, therapeutic orientation, attitudes anti interests; each indivitlual, although readily entering into a group, had different interests, needs and even problems. These secondary goals, however, centered primarily around: (1) increasing the amount and quality of cornmunications between unit staff and industrial employees concerning patients; (2) expanding the treatment teams to include tile industrial personnel who spend more time, in many instances, with the patient than do the unit personnel; and (3) increasing the extent and depth of our observations of patient social functioning. We wished also to alter the intramural status conceptions of the industrial workers and to familiarize them with the hospital processes, with which they were not well acquainted. It has proved to be the caliber of the contributions the industrial workers have made which has begun to alter their status in the eyes of the clinical staff. Some units have invited industrial personnel to attend staff meetings, realizing that the workers in industry see patients in another context. What they know about a particular patient is needed by a unit staff to get as complete a clinical picture as possible. The hospital training committee, working in conjunction with the industrial departments involved and with the social service and psychology departments, began a series of monthly class sessions, totaling eighteen hours, for food service and laundry personnel. One psychologist and two psychiatric social workers functioned as “teachers” (more precisely, as discussion leaders). The psychologist was responsible for the laundry personnel’s training which was completed in a one-month series. To reach all the food service employees required two psychiatric social workers for a five-month period (one, however, took only the first class, composed of supervisors, while the training of the remaining employees was the responsibility of the other worker.)