Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Commons^™

Student's Awareness Of Covert Needs Of Patients In A General Hospital, Elizabeth Liston Hedrick

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether an introduction course in psychiatric nursing for beginning students would increase their awareness of the covert nursing needs of the hospitalized patient.

Literature was reviewed to find out what had been written concerning covert needs, how one could discern them and to determine the need of the patient as an individual.

Using the problem solving method, a tool was prepared to test the ability to identify covert nursing problems. A situational test was developed from experiences of seven hospitalized patients. A pilot study was conducted to perfect the tool.

The sample …