A telenursing practice for care of people with schizophrenia: Telephone intervention problem solving

Schizophrenia makes it difficult for people to solve the problems they face in their daily lives. Thus, schizophrenic patients living in a community need special applications to cope with these problems. The Telephone Intervention Problem Solving (TIPS) has been developed by Beebe to serve as a solution for various daily problems of patients with schizophrenia, to offer them coping alternatives, to remind them to use these alternatives and to evaluate the effectiveness of these coping efforts. TIPS, which is conducted with weekly phone calls, is a telenursing practice based on the theory of planned behavior and conducted using problem solving process. Experimental studies conducted on this topic have shown that TIPS extends the time patients with schizophrenia spend in the community, and reduces the number of days spent and applications performed in rehospitalization process. It has also been found that this practice improves the psychiatric medication adherence and reduces the severity of psychiatric symptoms. TIPS was practiced within the context of a doctoral thesis for the first time in Turkey. After the practice, it was concluded that the practice protocol items included in the guideline can be easily used and that it is necessary to rework on only the fourth item. In light of this information, this review article aims to introduce TIPS to psychiatric nurses and to guide them to put TIPS into practice.