A STUDY OF PATTERN OF REFERRALS IN LIAISON PSYCHIATRY

Liaison psychiatry specializes in bridging psychiatric services to other specialities. It has been actively intervening in the reduction of the communication gap between the various specialities in many health care setups. Thereby it provides them the ability to acquire adequate understanding about the intricacies involved in treating patients with physical and psychiatric co-morbidities. Efficient communication between different levels of care has a great impact on quality of health care. Objectives: To assess the source of referral, reason for referral, the psychiatric diagnosis of the patients referred and the Psychiatric treatment initiated by the referring team and the knowledge of the illness. Materials and method: The study was a cross sectional study conducted on the out patients and inpatients referred to the psychiatric department in a tertiary care hospital in central India. It was completed in the time period of 3 months from June 1st 2014 to August 15th 2014 with a sample size of 150 patients. All the referred patients were evaluated by a consultant psychiatrist and diagnosis was made according to the diagnostic guidelines of ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases -10th Edition). Results: Out of the total number of patients who were referred 79(52.6%) patients were males and 71(47.3%) were females. The mean age of the study population was 36.01 years. A majority of the patients belonged to the age group of 21-30 years. A majority of the referrals were made from the department of medicine (n=76, 50.6%).The various reasons for psychiatric referral were analyzed and it was found that the most common reason was the presence abnormal behaviour (n=37, 24.6%). The most common psychiatric diagnosis made was substance use disorders (n=51, 34%) Conclusion: The observations of our study clearly show that there is significant gap existing in consultation liaison psychiatry as reflected in the profile and patterns referrals assessed. Early diagnosis and management of psychiatric disorders in patients presenting to the other departments with various physical illnesses definitely hasten recovery, reduce morbidity and improve quality of life. The way ahead is too long in this field and the need for improving the liaison is crucial in reducing the burden of morbidity and improving the quality of life of the patient and their carers