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Evaluation of a community based service for urgent psychiatric assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

M. J. Crawford
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, Maudsley Hospital
D. Kohen*
Affiliation:
2nd Floor, East Wing, Homerton Hospital, Homerton Row, London E9 6SR
J. Dalton
Affiliation:
Whittington Hospital, Highgate Hill, London N19 5NF
*
Correspondence
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Abstract

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The Urgent Assessment Service (UAS) was set up to provide community based urgent psychiatric assessment to a range of referrers. The work of the service was assessed over a six month period. Results show that it was popular with a broad range of medical and non-medical professionals. Patients generally presented with depression or psychotic illnesses and those referred from non-medical sources were more likely to be suffering from schizophrenia and assessed as being at least as unwell as those referred by GPs and hospital based doctors. Rates or referral to hospital services were low with the vast majority of patients being referred back to their general practitioner after initial assessment and treatment.

Type
Original Papers
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 © 1996 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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