The purpose of this thesis was to create a versatile patient guide for the youth psychiatric care ward 70. This guide aims to address the patient needs and en-compasses important information on ward's procedures, nursing and treatment methods and multi-professional co-operation. The guide looks to provides a con-tinuous point of reference for both the ward’s patients and their parents. Further-more, the guide can be used by the staff of the ward, aiding them in delivering the information about the ward itself to the new patients and their parents.

The principal of this thesis is the Youth Psychiatric Care Ward 70, part of the regional division of Northern Ostrobothnia Hospital and Oulu University Hospital. The ward provides psychiatric treatment for mentally unwell young people bet-ween the ages of 13 and 17.

For this thesis, we researched publifications on youth mental development, youth psychiatric care and patient guidance. The patient guide was drawn up in colla-boration with ward 70 and based on the considerations and wishes raised by their staff as well as the support material provided by the department. A sample guide was given to the ward to test use and the feedback received was taken into con-sideration when finalising the guide.

The ward and the patients can utilise the patient guide as part of the admission procedure of familiarise the patients with the operation of the ward. The patient guide is in electronically and in paper format, this makes it easy to update. Should any other wards wish to adapt this, the guide can be easily modified to suit their requirements.

To further develop this thesis, it would be useful to conduct research into what information young patients consider important and incorporate these findings in to the current guide. It would also be interesting to ascertain if the patients found this guide of use