Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T11:37:15.935Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Assessment by doctors and nurses of deliberate self-harm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Peter Lepping*
Affiliation:
Department of Liaison Psychiatry, West Cheshire Hospital, Liverpool Road, Chester CH2 1BQ
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Type
Columns
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, 2003

Sian Weston (Psychiatric Bulletin, February 2003, 27, 57-60) points out the differences between doctors and nurses assessing deliberate self-harm. From my experience looking at the Liaison Psychiatry service in Chester and Wirral, I can certainly confirm her findings that doctors are much more likely to refer to other doctors for follow-up. This was confirmed in a recent audit that we did locally. I feel that this finding is more accurate than the previous limited research discussed.

The reasons for this might be that inexperienced Senior House Officers want to be safe and therefore feel that an additional psychiatric opinion can aid in this process. It is also possible, however, that publication bias played a part in the previous articles, because the main aim of most of these papers was to prove that nurses' assessments are as good as doctors' assessments, a finding with obvious resource implications. In light of Sian Weston's findings, it certainly remains unclear whether we can be sure at this point that the consequences of being seen by a nurse or by a doctor are actually the same for the patients with regards to follow-up arrangements.

Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.