Difficulties Experienced by Nurses in Psychiatric Hospitals During the Transfer of Psychiatric Inpatients With Physical Complications to General Hospitals: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study.
Rie Chiba, Misato Hirota, Yuta Hayashi and 3 others
PMID 41906374WHAT IT FOUND
Most psychiatric nurses reported difficulty transferring patients to general hospitals, citing stigma and unclear roles.
Regular information sharing about specific patients reduced these difficulties, but routine cooperation meetings between hospitals did not.
Key findings
01More than 70% of participants experienced difficulties because they felt patients were treated differently or were hard for general hospital staff to understand.
02Sufficient information sharing about specific patients was associated with significantly fewer provider-related difficulties, whereas routine cooperation and communication between hospitals was not.
03Only 44.6% of respondents reported being involved in sufficient information sharing when transferring patients.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study surveyed only management nurses (head or deputy head nurses), which may not reflect the experiences of staff nurses directly involved in transfers. The response rate was 26.8%, and the sample was heavily weighted toward general and long-term care wards (75%), potentially skewing results away from acute care contexts. The survey items were developed by the authors and not fully validated with factor analysis, relying instead on internal consistency. The cross-sectional design cannot prove that information sharing causes reduced difficulties, only that they are associated.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Arimakougen Psychiatry Research Center. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that establishing regular communication channels or partnership meetings between hospitals will reduce transfer difficulties. The study found that routine cooperation had no significant effect on nurses' reported difficulties, while specific patient information sharing did.