Saraiva, S, Guthrie, E orcid.org/0000-0002-5834-6616, Walker, A et al. (9 more authors) (2020) The nature and activity of liaison mental services in acute hospital settings: a multi-site cross sectional study. BMC Health Services Research, 20 (1). 308. ISSN 1472-6963
Abstract
Background
To describe the clinical activity patterns and nature of interventions of hospital-based liaison psychiatry services in England.
Methods
Multi-site, cross-sectional survey. 18 acute hospitals across England with a liaison psychiatry service. All liaison staff members, at each hospital site, recorded data on each patient they had face to face contact with, over a 7 day period. Data included location of referral, source of referral, main clinical problem, type of liaison intervention employed, staff professional group and grade, referral onto other services, and standard assessment measures.
Results
A total of 1475 face to face contacts from 18 hospitals were included in the analysis, of which approximately half were follow-up reviews. There was considerable variation across sites, related to the volume of Emergency Department (ED) attendances, number of hospital admissions, and work hours of the team but not to the size of the hospital (number of beds). The most common clinical problems were co-morbid physical and psychiatric symptoms, self-harm and cognitive impairment. The main types of intervention delivered were diagnosis/formulation, risk management and advice. There were differences in the type of clinical problems seen by the services between EDs and wards, and also differences between the work conducted by doctors and nurses. Almost half of the contacts were for continuing care, rather than assessment. Eight per cent of all referrals were offered follow up with the LP team, and approximately 37% were referred to community or other services.
Conclusions
The activity of LP services is related to the flow of patients through an acute hospital. In addition to initial assessments, services provide a wide range of differing interventions, with nurses and doctors carrying out distinctly different roles within the team. The results show the volume and diversity of LP work. While much clinical contact is acute and confined to the inpatient episode, the LP service is not defined solely by an assessment and discharge function; cases are often complex and nearly half were referred for follow up including liaison team follow up.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 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 in a credit line to the data |
Keywords: | Liaison psychiatry; Mental health liaison services; Activity survey |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) > Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (Leeds) > Academic Unit of Health Economics (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) > Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (Leeds) > Centre for Health Services Research (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) > Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (Leeds) > Academic Unit of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 16 Dec 2020 16:21 |
Last Modified: | 16 Dec 2020 16:21 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BMC |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12913-020-05165-x |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:169045 |