Why are hospital doctors not referring to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry? – a systemic review

Chen, Kai Yang, Evans, Rebecca, and Larkins, Sarah (2016) Why are hospital doctors not referring to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry? – a systemic review. BMC Psychiatry, 16 (390). pp. 1-12.

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Abstract

Background: Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (CLP) is a subspecialty of psychiatry that provides care to inpatients under non-psychiatric care. Despite evidence of benefits of CLP for inpatients with psychiatric comorbidities, referral rates from hospital doctors remain low. This review aims to understand barriers to CLP inpatient referral as described in the literature.

Methods: We searched on Medline, PsychINFO, CINAHL and SCOPUS, using MESH and the following keywords: 1) Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, Consultation Liaison Psychiatry, Consultation Psychiatry, Liaison Psychiatry, Hospital Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine, the 2) Referral, Consultation, Consultancy and 3) Inpatient, Hospitalized patient, Hospitalized patient. We considered papers published between 1 Jan 1965 and 30 Sep 2015 and all articles written in English that contribute to understanding of barriers to CLP referral were included.

Results: Thirty-five eligible articles were found and they were grouped thematically into three categories: (1) Systemic factors; (2) Referrer factors; (3) Patient factors. Systemic factors that improves referrals include a dedicated CLP service, active CLP consultant and collaborative screening of patients. Referrer factors that increases referrals include doctors of internal medicine specialty and comfortable with CLP. Patients more likely to be referred tend to be young, has psychiatric history, live in an urban setting or has functional psychosis.

Conclusion: This is the first systematic review that examines factors that influence CLP inpatient referrals. Although there is research in this area, it is of limited quality. Education could be provided to hospital doctors to better recognise mental illness. Collaborative screening of vulnerable groups could prevent inpatients from missing out on psychiatric care. CLP clinicians should use the knowledge gained in this review to provide quality engagement with referrers.

Item ID: 48360
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1471-244X
Keywords: Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, hospital psychiatry, barriers to referral, consultation inpatient
Additional Information:

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Funders: James Cook University, Townsville Hospital Health Service
Date Deposited: 10 Apr 2017 05:06
FoR Codes: 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3202 Clinical sciences > 320221 Psychiatry (incl. psychotherapy) @ 100%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920209 Mental Health Services @ 100%
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