The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association
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J Am Osteopath Assoc · Jul 2009
Improving the quality of suicide risk assessments in the psychiatric emergency setting: physician documentation of process indicators.
Suicide risk assessment in the emergency department is a challenging task for psychiatrists and is further complicated when patients are admitted involuntarily. ⋯ Many important risk factors for suicide were not documented in emergency department assessments, suggesting that overall quality of psychiatric risk assessments was not optimal. This lack of documentation has important implications from a treatment and medicolegal perspective.