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Role of the duty psychiatrist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Judith E. Nicholls*
Affiliation:
The Midland Nerve Hospital, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2NJ
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Recent changes in psychiatric services have produced a movement away from large hospitals to management within the community. A successful home treatment service with 24-hour cover has been described for severe acute psychiatric illness, though hospital admission was not entirely avoided (Dean et al, 1990). It is difficult to manage violent patients or those who will not comply with medication at home. If relatives are not supportive hospital admission will be required. Although living alone is not a contraindication to treatment at home, those who require constant supervision because they are, for example, suicidal need to be admitted. Concurrent physical problems may also necessitate hospital admission. Any future services must therefore include some in-patient care.

Type
Trainees' forum
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992

References

Dean, C. & Gadd, E. M. (1990) Home treatment for acute psychiatric illness. British Medical Journal, 301, 10211023.Google Scholar
Brown, N. S. & Ward, M. R. (1989) Junior doctors' workloads in psychiatric hospitals. Psychiatric Bulletin, 13, 507509.Google Scholar
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Kingdon, D. G. & Szulecka, T. K. (1986) Establishing a district psychiatric service without psychiatric trainees. Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 10, 338340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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