Pattern and Outcomes of Psychiatric Consultation in a General Hospital

The author investigated 85 case of inpatients who were referred for psychiatric consultation at Ewha Womans University Hospital during the period from January 1 to December 31, 1988 and analyzed the demographic data and the current of consultation.

The results were as follows :

1) Overall psychiatric consultation rate was 0.70% of total inpatient populations, and the number of consultation from the department of internal medicine was the highest of all the clinical departments(52.94%).

The department of neurosurgery ranked highest in the consultation rate(2.14%), but the medical part(0.85%) significantly ranked more than the surgical part(0.53%) in the consultation rate(P<0.001).

2) The age group of twenties to fourties showed the highest consultation rate and that of over sixties was 18.8%, but that of below tenth was only 1.2%.

3) Psychiatric consultation from intensive care unit was only 2.4% and the rate of admitted patients through emergency room was 40.0%.

The consultation rate was the highest in January and the rate of the hospital days within one week was the highest in the hospital days of consultation by department.

4) As to the reason for psychiatric consultation, physical symptoms with no laboratory abnormalities were the highest(33.6%) and psychiatric symptoms(55.1%) were more than physical symptoms(44.9%) at the time of consultation.

5) As to the diagnoses of consulted patients given by consultants, the first is organic mental disorders(27.1%) and the second is somatoform disoders(22.3%).

6) Among various concordance rates with consultants' recommendations, that of psychotropic drug recommendation was the highest(77.9%) and that of OPD follow up recommendation was the lowest(27.9%).

As to the concordance rate of psychotropic drug recommendation, the surgical part(85.7%) ranked more than the medical part(71.4%) (P<0.1).

The above results were compared with those of the others. In addition to this comparison, the author also reviewed the importance and the role of the Liaison Psychiatry in the general hospital.