title: Staff attitudes and treatment effectiveness.
abstract: Previous studies of the impact of staff attitude on outcome among psychiatric hospital patients appear to have yielded conflicting results. These conflicts could be the result of the somewhat imprecise methods generally used in such research. In the present study, the correlations between the mean OMISOS attitude scale scores of those staff members who had the greatest impact on patients and the improvement shown by those patients on six personality scales and two measures of tremulousness during the first 2 weeks of hospitalization were evaluated. Protective Benevolence, a scale that reflects a friendly, laissez-faire approach, was associated with improvement. However, the variables reflected by the Authoritarianism, Accountability and Conventionality scales appeared to impede progress. The relationships between staff attitude and improvement were, in any event, small.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D012008:Recurrence; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000628:therapy*; D012928:Social Desirability