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.
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Hosp Community Psychiatry · Dec 1977
A review of the medical records of adolescent psychiatric inpatients in a general hospital.
The psychiatric medical records of adolescents admitted to a major county receiving hospital over a six-month period were reviewed to discover the patterns of care. While 92 patients were admitted, medical records for only 56 were available from the record room. The two most common diagnoses were schizophrenia and adjustment reaction of adolescence. ⋯ About half of these diagnosed as having an adjustment reaction were given a major tranquilizer at admission and at discharge; their average hospitalization was 21 days. In his review of the charts, the author found that a great deal of the data necessary for the analysis either were unavailable or were presented in a way that prevented accurate or reliable interpretation. He offers several recommendations for improving documentation in medical records of adolescents.