ABSTRACT

While the focus of this chapter is on nursing in primary care, it is important to view this area in the more general context of developments in nursing and mental health care. In the specific setting of this book, it is also important to note that David Goldberg has been a very influential figure, (although somewhat uncharacteristically, a background one), in the development of British mental health nursing. Goldberg and his supervisee Kate Wooff in their research in Salford (Wooff and Goldberg 1988), showed that, in the latter part of the 1980s, community psychiatric nursing practice was drifting away from its previous focus on people with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, towards patients with neurotic problems in primary care. Wooff and Goldberg were particularly concerned that people with schizophrenia in the community would be left without any skilled nursing input. At the same time they were concerned with an apparent lack of appropriate training for nurses working in the primary care arena. This work in Salford stimulated others, including myself, to carry out further research into these changing roles of community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) (Gournay and Brooking 1994, 1995). Subsequently, David Goldberg was one of a small group in Manchester who planned the research and development on training for nurses in family interventions in schizophrenia carried out by Charlie Brooker and others (Brooker et al. 1994). Following David Goldberg’s move to the Institute of Psychiatry, he continued to support these training initiatives for community psychiatric nurses, and provided invaluable assistance in disseminating such training (now known as the Thorn Programme) more widely across the UK and now internationally. One of David Goldberg’s first tasks at the Institute of Psychiatry was to establish a significant nursing section and to support initiatives in both research and training. This led to the inauguration of a Chair in Psychiatric Nursing in 1995. His continuing support has led to the Section at the Institute now having the largest portfolio of mental health nursing research in Europe, and to the section of nursing now developing a range of training innovations for nurses, including forensic care, neuropsychiatry and cognitive behaviour therapy. It should also be said that throughout the 1990s, David Goldberg has supported nursing behind the scenes and in his various roles in the Department of Health and other policy fora has

promoted mental health nursing wherever possible. Mention of David Goldberg’s contribution to nursing would not be complete

without saying something of his position with regard to nurse behaviour therapy. In the mid 1970s he was one of the fiercest opponents of the development of training for nurses in behaviour therapy. This initiative commenced at the Maudsley Hospital in 1972, and has, from that time until the present, been led by Professor Isaac Marks. David commented that training nurses as therapists was analogous to training lorry drivers as airline pilots! However, as is also characteristic of the man, David changed his views when evidence of efficacy emerged. It has to be said that in the last three or four years David has not only supported this form of training, but has ensured that in a new Master’s Programme in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy at the Institute, nurses have become equal partners with psychiatrists and psychologists.