ADMINISTRATIVE ASPECTS OF A TEACHING HOSPITAL
RICHARD N. KOHL M. D.1
1 The New York Hospital and the Department of Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College.
The administrator of a psychiatric hospital plays an important role in treatment as well as in teaching and research. Management of the hospital environment is in every respect therapeutic, and therefore should be based upon a dynamic concept of psychiatry.
1. Admission policies are established in relation to therapeutic facilities as well as special interests in teaching and research.
2. The training program for resident physicians is closely related to administrative policies.
3. Distribution of patients throughout the hospital is not determined by diagnosis but by the patient's medical needs and social adaptability.
4. The physical aspects of the hospital environment are of dynamic significance in psychotherapy.
5. Analysis of the patient's reaction to the hospital's special needs, to restrictions, and to the group reveals factors that are dynamically significant in psychotherapy.
6. The administrative psychiatrist is responsible for treatment of the group as a whole and is thus influential in directing psychotherapy of the individual patient.
7. The hospital environment facilitates treatment of the personality with regard to all its aspects.
8. A social behavior chart is used for personality investigation of patients assigned to floors of a convalescent and unrestricted nature and has been found to be of considerable value with regard to administrative decisions, in individual psychotherapy, and in the training program for nurses and resident psychiatrists.
