Usefulness of the Model
This paper presents the first practice model to help psychiatric-mental health nurses
implement evidence-based practice into the nursing care of people with unpleasant
AH. This model provides evidence-based psychiatric nursing assessments, individual
and group interventions and standardized tools to evaluate those interventions. Use of
this model helps to establish a common language of AH among staff, patients, patients’
families and community caregivers. This model also assists nurses in understanding the
complexity of unpleasant AH and the similarities and differences in how individuals
experience and manage this often-distressing symptom.
Psychiatric-mental health nurses across a variety of clinical inpatient and outpatient
mental health settings can use this practice model for teaching voice hearers self
management strategies. This model also provides a framework for teaching nursing
students and new psychiatric-mental health nurses how to interact therapeutically with
those who hear unpleasant AH.