Policy Partners—Nursing and Psychiatry in the Capital: An Interview With Dr. Mary Jane England

Abstract

In this era of change in psychiatric service delivery, we have been bombarded with the realities of man aged care. At the same time we are forging new rela tionships with payers, providers, and with each other. To most nurses, the term collaboration means work ing cooperatively with one's interdisciplinary team. Yet in this changing world where we are forced to ex pand our horizons at an increasingly faster rate, it is important to create dialogs with others who are influ ential in arenas other than those we live in day to day. Our guest is a well-known and highly respected child psychiatrist who rose to national prominence from her roots in Boston. She also has a very special orientation to nurses because her mother was a nurse graduate of the Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine, and practiced for many years at the Boston Lying-in Hospital, the Florence Crittenden- Hastings Home, and at the Phillips House of the Mas sachusetts General Hospital. At a time in psychiatry's evolution when so many are squabbling over turf is sues, Dr. Mary Jane England offers a fresh and non- discipline-specific view of the future of the delivery sys tem for psychiatric services and one where in the con tinuum of care nurses can best serve clients and their families.

Dr. England is a child psychiatrist trained in adult psychiatry at Boston University Hospital and at Mount Zion in San Francisco. She also received training in child psychiatry at Boston City Hospital. After that she worked in the neighborhoods of Boston. In the mid- 1970s, she was appointed Associate Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health in Massachusetts. After 5 years, she was appointed Commissioner of So cial Services, a new state agency in Massachusetts for children and families. After 10 years in state govern ment, Dr. England joined the faculty at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where she was Associate Dean and Director of the Mid-Career Master in Public Administration Program. From academia she went to the Prudential Insurance Com pany of America as National Vice-President of Men tal Health and Substance Abuse, responsible for policy and program development for 25 million Americans. In 1990 she was recruited to serve as president of the Washington Business Group. The Washington Busi ness Group on Health is a national nonprofit health policy group whose membership includes the nation's largest employers, mostly from the private sector, such as International Business Machines, Chrysler, Ford Mo tor Company, Honeywell, and Pepsico. Some of the large public employers, such as the U.S. Postal Service and the California Public Employees Retirement Sys tem, are also members. Dr. England is the president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the third woman to hold the position.