ABSTRACT
The results of research from several countries and settings have shown that when the patients of general practitioners, physicians, and psychiatrists are managed by advanced clinical nurses they do at least as well as patients who are managed by other professionals.1 Although psychiatric nurses play an increasingly salient clinical part, no controlled study has been made of the work of such nurses in primary care in the United Kingdom. Impressive controlled findings were reported for the follow up of discharged patients with neurosis by community psychiatric nurses who were based in a hospital,2 and psychiatric nurse therapists have been monitored mainly in uncontrolled hospital settings.
