A very modest proposal for 1990s C/L psychiatry |
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Authors: | M F Weiner J Sadler B J Fenton M C Fitzpatrick J D Crowder K Goodkin |
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Institution: | University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, Dallas 75235-9070. |
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Abstract: | The prediction that consultation-liaison psychiatry would play an integral role in the management of all medical/surgical patients in large hospitals has not come to pass. The primary reason is that no adequate funding mechanism has ever been found to support such a large endeavor. The economic climate as we enter the 1990s makes such funding even less likely. The authors suggest that C/L psychiatry accept a lesser role, largely confined to teaching hospitals. That role, which has been successful at a large public teaching hospital for nearly 10 years, encompasses serving as a primary psychiatric teaching site for medical students, a primary teaching site for psychiatry residents and other postgraduate physicians rotating through psychiatry, a source of innovative dispositions for medically ill psychiatric patients, and a source of opportunity for interdisciplinary research. |
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