Guidelines for a psychiatric hospital intake staff meeting

Guidelines are presented that help to make psychiatric intake conferences more efficient and productive. The emphasis is placed on having designated personnel meet individually with the patient as well as review the patient's chart prior to the formal intake conference. Thus, the personnel is able to spend more time on formulating a diagnosis and treatment plan than on reviewing the past history of the patient. Information presented at such conferences should consist more of unique contributions from the personnel (e.g., observations, impressions, testing, etc.) than of redundant material commonly known by the personnel assigned to the patient.