A collaborative approach to clinical standards development. Psychiatry and psychiatric nursing in a changing world.

Today's consumers, faced with limited resources, want documented proof of the quality of a product or service. This shift to consumerism has caused health care providers and institutions to carefully examine their practice and move toward the establishment of standards of care in all areas. The authors are recommending a collaborative approach between standards and are advocating the use of the Marker Model as a system to define, organize, integrate, document, and monitor standards in the fields of psychiatry and psychiatric nursing.