No abstract

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) pose major therapeutic challenges to mental health professionals. Effective and practical treatment of the patient with BPD is needed in short-term inpatient settings, and psychiatric nurses are in a unique position to implement innovative treatment strategies for the borderllne patient. The Creative Coping Group is a practice model designed by psychiatric nurses for patients with BPD, using a cognitive-behavioral f'ramework. It is a group therapy intervention based on Linehan's Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) that addresses the ineffective coping of patients with BPD that results in chronic suicidal behavior. Linehan's framework focuses on deficits in emotional control, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance. The objective of the group sessions is to foster insight and awareness into symptoms, feelings, and behaviors through psychoeducation, group exercises, discussion, and homework assignments.

Nurses use theory to sharpen their observations and to facilitate their understanding of the human responses to which they direct their interventions. An assessment tool, derived from the nursing theory 'modelling and role-modelling', was developed by nurses at the University of Michigan Hospitals. This tool appears to elicit the data necessary to assess and diagnose the health status of clients. This article describes the assessment tool, why it was developed, the objectives in utilization of the tool and suggestions for implementation.