Our Services
Liaison Psychiatry
Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry provides a fit vantage point for watching the changes that permit prediction of future directions in psychiatry as a medical discipline. The kind of psychiatry that the consultants practice and the type of training, skills, and professional attitudes that their work requires represent a model that is likely to prevail in psychiatry in the coming years
- Specializes in the interface between medicine and psychiatry, usually taking place in the hospital or medical setting.
- It has areas of overlap with other distinct disciplines including psychosomatic medicine, health psychology and neuropsychology.
Role
- To see patients currently admitted as general medical inpatients at the request of the treating medical or surgical consultant or team.
- Provides a service to patients in a general medical hospital, inpatients, outpatients or attenders at the Emergency Department.
- Referrals are made when the treating medical team has questions about a patient’s mental health, or how that patient’s mental health is affecting his or her care and treatment.
- Involvement of psychiatrist is brief and includes an assessment of the problem and suggestions on how these problems may be solved.
Scope
- Patients who may report physical symptoms as a result of a mental disorder, or patients with medically unexplained physical symptoms.
- Supporting the management of patients with mental disorders who have been admitted for the treatment of medical problems.
- Assisting with the diagnosis, treatment and functional assessment of people with dementia, including advice on discharge planning or the need for long-term care.
- Assisting with assessment of the capacity of a patient to consent to treatment.
- Patients with medical conditions that result in psychiatric or behavioral symptoms, such as delirium.
- Patients who may not have a psychiatric disorder but are experiencing distress related to their medical problems.
- Patients who have attempted suicide or self-harm.