Consult liaison psychiatry in the emergency department
Consult liaison psychiatry in the emergency department

Summary/Abstract: Boarding of psychiatric patients, (defined as a length of stay greater than four hours after medical clearance), is ubiquitous throughout emergency departments nationwide (USA). The limited number of inpatient psychiatric beds combined with the increase in mental health related visits to emergency department has amplified the number of patients boarding in the accidents and emergency. Thus, the primary goal of most emergency departments is to keep the patients safe until they can be moved into a mental health unit or further stabilized and discharged home with an appropriate outpatient care plan; in this retrospective data review we set to examine the impact of adding a full time consult liaison psychiatric service to the general emergency department. For that purpose, we compared the data of the same trimester of two different years of all psychiatric presentations to the emergency department and calculating the boarding time and the admission rate to the psychiatric hospital in the before and after the inception of the service. We discussed the results and analyze contributing factors to quality improvement.

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