[A study of interconsultations requested to an Internal Medicine Department]

The medical interconsultation contributes knowledge of a speciality to another one, but implies an important workload. The objective is to define de characteristics of medical interconsultation requested to an Internal Medicine Department and to assess the workload that they involve.

Medical interconsultations requested during 6 months were included. Sex and age of the patient, petitioner department, reason for the interconsultation, follow-up length and referring to other departments were evaluated.

181 medical interconsultation were requested, 53.6% were women. Median age was 68.5 years (17-98), and median follow-up was 6 days (1-76). Surgical departments requested 86.7%. The reason was long pathology in 19.7% and cardiac pathology in 18.9%. There was more than one reason in 53 medical interconsultations. Twelve patients were referred to other departments.

Most of medical interconsultations come from the surgical area. The differences among the petitioner departments are due to their different kind of organization and staffing of to the different types of formation or criteria of requestion physicians. Cardiopulmonary pathology predominates, possibly because of high prevalence of this pathology in the hospital. The workload due to medical interconsultation is similar to workload internists endure in their hospitalization area.