The capacity of district hospitals to accommodate the decentralisation of mental health services: a cross sectional study of five government district hospitals in Botswana
Year: 2008
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: ABSTRACT \nIntroduction \nIn Southern Botswana, an expected advantage of the decentralisation and integration of \nmental health services into general health services was the potential to allow for the district \nhospitals to manage a larger number of mentally ill patients thus decreasing the patient load \nof Lobatse Mental Hospital. However, the number of admissions to the referral hospital for \nthe south of Botswana is increasing. The objective of the study was to describe the \ncapacity of district hospitals to care for mentally ill patients in terms of the provision of \nrelevant inpatient, outpatient and outreach mental health services as well as the availability \nof trained workers who agree with the principles of decentralisation of mental health \nservices. \nMaterials and methods \nThis was a descriptive cross sectional study involving a self-administered questionnaire \nsurvey of key informants and health care providers conducted in five district hospitals in the south of Botswana. There were a total of 5 Chief Medical Officers, and 75 ward staff \n(12 doctors and 63 nurses) in the study. \nThe quantitative data was entered using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS \nversion 13) and analyzed by this software. The qualitative data was coded and thematically \nanalysed and reported. \nResults \nIn all five hospitals, all the doctors and nurses had undergraduate training in psychiatry and \nwere expected to manage mentally ill patients. There were eighteen health workers (1 \ndoctor and 17 nurses) with postgraduate training in psychiatry/mental health.
Author: Simone Alison Garrett-Walcott
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W80309584