Use of joint consultations in inpatient psychiatry

The coexistence of medical and psychiatric problems in psychiatric inpatients often causes compliance difficulties, based on either irrational and distorted fears of medical treatment or more rational concerns that proposed psychiatric treatment could adversely affect a preexisting medical condition. The authors propose the use of joint consultations, in which both the psychiatrist and the other medical specialist meet together with the patient, as a way of ameliorating such distortions and conflicts and thereby improving compliance with both medical and psychiatric treatment.