The proposed research will investigate how psychiatric nurses teach about psychiatric medications with adult patients and the patients' subsequent recidivism. Usual styles of communicating medication information to psychiatric patients have not been scientifically tested for effectiveness. One of the outcome variables that impact significantly on psychiatric patients is their recidivism rates. If the style with which adult patients are taught could improve understanding and independence around medication issues, then the nurse's teaching style would have a bearing on psychiatric recidivism rates. The two contrasted styles of medication teaching in this study are pedagogy (a didactic, traditional teaching style) and andragogy (an experiential, knowledge-based teaching style). The alternative hypothesis of this study is that teaching style affects the rate of psychiatric 30 day recidivism.
