Manner of Request Psychiatric Counseling from Educational Hospitals

Abstract Introduction: 30 to 60% of patients admitted to non-psychiatric wards have at least one significant psychiatric illness. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency, causes, and quality of psychiatric counseling requested. Materials and Methods: This descriptive study was carried out on all patients admitted to educational hospitals in Rasht, Iran from 2012 to 2014, for which psychiatric consultation was requested and their counseling sheets were available. Data were extracted based on the checklist. Assessment of the quality of the consultation request and the response quality of the counseling were done. Data were analyzed by SPSS21. Results: The frequency of psychiatric counseling application in this study was calculated to be 0/3%. A total of 905 counseling papers were reviewed. According to the data, 51/1% of patients were female and 48/9% were male, with the mean age of 45/7 years. For 54/7% of the patients, emergency counseling and for 45/3%, of them non-emergency counseling was requested. The most requesting counseling departments were surgery and internal medicine (14/6% and 12%, respectively). The lowest frequency of consultation requests was for anesthesiology department (0/1%). The most common reason for requesting psychiatric counseling was restlessness (26/75%) and then medication setting (14/45%). The most common diagnostic suspicion in response to counseling was delirium and the average duration for requesting counseling was 2.9 days after admission. Conclusion: Considering the relatively low frequency and quality of counseling in this study, more attention to the use of psychiatric counseling in medical patients and coherent training of assistants to improve the quality of counseling seem necessary. Conflict of interest: non declared