Fired up, not burnt out--focusing on the rewards of working in psychiatry.

A positive morale of staff is essential for the quality of mental health care. There are at least two reasons for this. One is the impact on recruitment and retention. The current difficulties to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of qualified staff vary across countries and even within the same country across different professional groups. For example, they can be markedly different for psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychiatric nurses. However, in many countries, the difficulties of filling posts with qualified staff are significant, and problems of attracting talented young medical graduates into psychiatry are wide spread. Without qualified staff there is no qualified mental health care. Alongside other factors such as salary, working conditions and social prestige, a high staff morale is likely to lure more people into the profession and make them continue to work in it. Another reason is the influence on treatment outcomes for patients. Staff not only need expertise, competence and skills but also need good morale to deliver the best possible care that leads to positive results. Evidence suggests that a better morale in community mental health care leads to more favourable patient outcomes (Priebe et al., 2004).