Der Nervenarzt
-
Patients with mental health problems in accident and emergency departments (A&E) are frequent users and often difficult to handle. Failure in managing these patients can cause adversities to both patients and A&E staff. It has been shown that nurse-based psychiatric consultation-liaison (CL) services work successfully and cost effectively in English-speaking countries, but they are hardly found in European countries. The aim of this study was to determine whether such a liaison service can be established in the A&E of a German general hospital. We describe structural and procedural elements of this service and present data of A&E patients who were referred to the newly established service during the first year of its existence, as well as an evaluation of this nurse-led service by non-psychiatric staff in the A&E and psychiatrists of the hospital's department of psychiatry. ⋯ Nurse-based psychiatric CL-services in A&E departments of general hospitals, originally developed in English-speaking countries, can be adapted for and implemented in a European country like Germany. Open access: This article is published with open access at link.springer.com.