Hospital & community psychiatry
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Hosp Community Psychiatry · Nov 1978
Comparative StudyOvernight admission for psychiatric emergencies.
Patients identified as psychiatric cases on the emergency ward of a 1036-bed teaching hospital are handled in one of three ways: released with outpatient referral, admitted to a psychiatric inpatient facility, or hospitalized in a general medical holding unit with a 24-hour stay. The authors obtained demographic and diagnostic data on 377 psychiatric patients seen consecutively on the ward and then compared those admitted to the holding unit (83) with those released (193) or hospitalized (101). ⋯ More than half the patients admitted to the holding unit were released the following day. The authors discuss the advantages of overnight admission as an alternative to hospitalization or release.