Interpersonal Techniques: The Crux of Psychiatric Nursing

area. Hildegard Peplau (Pottstown, Pa., Hospital School of Nursing; B.A., Bennington; M.A., Ed.D., Teachers College, Columbia University) is professor of nursing at Rutgers University and chairman of the advanced program in psychiatric nursing in which graduate nurse students are trained for clinical specialization in psychiatric nursing. Each of the areas of nursing practice has a particular clinical emphasis. This emphasis does not preclude attention to all the other aspects of the workrole of the nurse practitioner, but more time, effort, and thought are given to this particular facet. For example, nurses in public health programs emphasize health teaching, not to the exclusion of the technical aspects of nursing practice nor of the supportive, reassuring, mother-surrogate type of nurse activities. But, by and large, nurses who visit patients in their homes spend a proportionately larger part of their time teaching. Medical-surgical nursing emphasizes technical care; pediatric nursing emphasizes the mother-surrogate role; in this paper I want to consider the particular emphasis of psychiatric nursing. I have indicated various subroles of the workrole of nurses. Briefly,