A literature search was carried out on the role of the Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) in counselling within the Primary Health Care Team (PHCT) which highlighted a lack of theoretical knowledge for the psycho-social issues and that CPNs were not trained to provide counselling. The aim of this thesis was centred around the role in counselling the CPNs in Mid-Surrey Health District had in PHCTs, and whether General Practitioners (GPs) perceived CPNs as CPNs or counsellors. Two hypotheses were devised at the beginning of the study and a methodology was pursued in proving or disproving these hypotheses. Results indicated that CPNs were aware of the meaning of the term ‘counselling’ and that all but one felt they had not enough knowledge to carry out more in depth counselling/psychotherapeutic interventions. They all felt that counselling training was inherent to their work as CPNs within the PHCT. This therefore supported the hypothesis that CPN counselling in the PHCT needs to be trained. The GPs result was that they were unaware of qualifications held by CPNs or counsellors. They felt that CPN was invaluable and it would be an advantage if CPNs had counselling training. However, some felt that CPNs needed to retrain the ‘multipurpose’ aspect of their work. From the results it was apparent that there was a misperception of the role of CPN and counsellor as some GPs felt that CPNs were already counsellors. However, the result was inconclusive in proving or disproving the hypothesis. Most GPs introduced the CPN as a CPN and not as a counsellor, although some GPs believed that CPNs were also trained in counselling. It is argued that although these findings indicate that CPNs need counselling training and counselling was perceived as an important part of their work, in depth counselling training was not regarded as necessary to carry out their work as CPN.

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