Evaluation of medical-psychiatric consultation

This report describes four approaches to the evaluation of hospital psychiatric consultation. These are: 1) a survey of actual consultation use; 2) a house staff attitudinal survey; 3) a patient chart review; and 4) a patient questionnaire. The findings of this project and those previously reported are: 1) The psychiatric consultation is under-utilized and a large number of house staff find it not useful. 2) The psychiatric and non-psychiatric house staff view the functions of consultation in markedly different ways. 3) A high percentage of written consultation reports are too vague to determine if the needs of the referring physician were met. 4) Patients usually respond positively to psychiatric consultation. The implications of these findings are discussed in this report.