Development of Care Model for Emergency Psychiatric Patients at Thapla District, Uttaradit Province

Abstract

  Emergency psychiatry is a behavior that must be treated immediately to save the patient and surrounding people from danger. This research and development study was designed to develop the care model for emergency psychiatric patients and to assess the result of model implementation when person confronts with psychiatric emergency. The action guidelines and output of research and technology development from department of mental health were applied as a conceptual framework for the care model development. The studied samples were 50 worker of the emergency action team in Thapla district, Uttaradit province. The research was conducted from June to December, 2021. The research tools were 1) personal data questionnaire, 2) semi–structure interview form, 3) the knowledge measurement form and 4) the satisfaction questionnaire. The reliability of research instruments tested using the Cronbach,s alpha coefficient was 0.87. Data were analyzed using the descriptive statistics and dependent t–test. A p–value less than 0.05 were statistically significant. The qualitative data was analyzed by content analysis.

           The result indicated that after training for competency development, the mean knowledge score of the personnel of emergency action team (= 15.96, S.D. = 1.94) was significantly higher than that of pre–training (= 11.91, S.D. = 2.31) (p < 0.01). The satisfaction of the worker of the emergency action team on this care model for emergency psychiatric patients was in a very good level (= 3.08, S.D. = 0.61). Therefore, this care model for emergency psychiatric patients should be further extended to continuous development, broadened its application in other network and competency development of the personnel of emergency action team using the self e–learning and practicing.