Patient and Medical Unit Staff Experiences of Proactive and Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry in The HOME Study: A Qualitative Investigation

Background

Consultation-liaison (C-L) psychiatry services aim to help general hospital staff provide better care for their patients. Recently, many inpatient C-L psychiatry services have adopted proactive and integrated approaches to achieve this aim. Despite these developments, there have been no interview-based studies of patients' and staff members' experiences of the new approaches.

Objective

To gain an in-depth understanding of patients' and medical unit staff members' experiences of a proactive and integrated C-L psychiatry service for older medical inpatients (Proactive Integrated C-L Psychiatry [PICLP]).

Methods

We conducted an interview-based qualitative study with thematic analysis. The participants were patients and staff who had experienced PICLP during The HOME Study, a randomized trial that evaluated PICLP in 24 medical units of three UK general hospitals.

Results

We conducted 97 interviews: 43 with patients or their proxies (family members who were interviewed on behalf of patients with significant cognitive impairment) and 54 with staff members of all relevant disciplines. Patients and staff both described how PICLP was a helpful addition to medical care and discharge planning. It enhanced the medical unit team's ability to address psychological, psychiatric, and social needs and provide patient-centered care. They welcomed proactive biopsychosocial assessments and the broader perspective that these offered on patients' complex problems. They also valued the integration of C-L psychiatrists into the unit teams and their daily contact with them. For patients, it fostered a therapeutic relationship and helped them to be more engaged in decisions about their medical care and discharge planning. For staff, it enabled ready access to psychiatric expertise and training opportunities. The few reported experiences of PICLP being unhelpful were mainly about the greater number of clinicians involved in patients' care and a lack of clarity about professional roles in the integrated team.

Conclusions

We found that older inpatients and medical unit staff experienced PICLP as both acceptable and generally helpful. Our findings add to the existing evidence for the benefits of proactive and integrated C-L psychiatry services.