Nurses helping nurses. Development of internal specialists in long-term care.

The prevalence of psychiatric disorders and behavioral disturbances among nursing home residents, combined with observed deficits in geriatric mental health/illness expertise among LTC staff, supports the need for creative approaches to improve the knowledge, understanding, and management of such problems among LTC providers. The train-the-trainer model described in this article proved to be a viable method to providing geriatric mental health consultation and training that targets both improved quality of life for residents and quality of work life for the staff in charge of residents' care. More collaborative efforts among nursing specialists, subspecialists, and generalists are needed to empower those who work in LTC to utilize strengths and abilities inherent to their positions. Nursing homes nurses, who are all too familiar with the problems and challenges of their patient population, may act not only as mental health trainers but also as resource persons, role models, liaisons with geropsychiatric specialists, and leaders in the application of geropsychiatric care principles to residents within their facility, thus promoting improved resident and staff care alike.