Effect of psychiatric liaison nurse specialist consultation on the care of medical-surgical patients with sitters

Abstract

One hundred seven patients in an acute care setting who had lay sitters to provide the constant observation judged necessary to meet their safety needs were studied to determine the effect of psychiatric liaison nurse specialist (PLNS) consultation on nursing care and the use of sitters. After placement in either a suicidal or nonsuicidal group, subjects were randomly assigned to receive consultation or not. Outcome variables of number of sitter shifts, number of nursing note observations, number of patient and sitter incidents and length of hospital stay were considered. Multiple analysis of variance indicated no significant differences among the groups for number of sitter shifts or number of nursing note observations. A significant main effect for group on length of hospital stay was found with suicidal patients having a significantly shorter hospital stay. Number of patients and sitter incidents were too small for analysis.