Nurse-led liaison psychiatry service for older adults: service evaluation

recognition of psychosomatic disorders. Liaison psychiatry demands a different set of specialised skills to those required in general adult psychiatry. The liaison psychiatrist must be adept at assessing relevant physical findings in addition to mental state, at engaging individuals with somatic presentations of psychiatric illness and at managing those with psychiatric and physical comorbidity. Such skills may not readily be learned outside of centres which have a welldeveloped specialist liaison service under consultant supervision. Nevertheless, a general adult team can do much to aid a positive attitude in the medical setting towards psychiatry, promote a bio-psychosocial approach to diagnosis, and increase the potential of physicians to treat common psychiatric disorders. Priority should be placed on fostering communication with non-psychiatric colleagues so as to optimise mutual learning.