Services for patients with BPD need to be improved say psychiat...(up on Mental Health Policy in its 2006 r...),Health

Lack of specialist training was also a concern.

The majority of nurses strongly agreed that they had a key role to play in the assessment and management of people with BPD and 90 per cent said they would be keen to receive further training in dealing with BPD says Professor Cowman.

We were concerned to note that only three per cent had received post-graduate training. In contrast, Australian nurses receive 11 times as much post-graduate training in BPD as their colleagues in the Republic of Ireland.

This lack of training needs to be addressed as other studies have shown that it can improve both knowledge of BPD and attitudes towards it.

88 per cent of the nurses who took part in the survey said that people with BPD were difficult to treat. 75 per cent said they were very or moderately difficult to look after and 80 per cent believed that they were more difficult to look after than other clients.

62 per cent felt that lack of staff training or expertise contributed to inadequate care for people with BPD and 65 per cent said that not telling people they had BPD was another factor.

Nurses were also asked how much they knew about the condition. The number of questions answered correctly ranged from two to nine and averaged 5.8.

When it came to how services could be improved, providing specialist services for people with BPD was the most favoured option (65 per cent), followed by standard protocols for managing people with BPD (60 per cent) and skills training workshops for staff (51 per cent).

Improving undergraduate training (48 per cent), improving in-service training (48 per cent) and providing psychiatric staff who liaise with accident and emergency departments (42 per cent) were also popular responses.

This study shows that psychiatric nurses come into regular contact with patients with BPD and believe they have a role to pl
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