Abstract
Objective:
To provide a descriptive characterization of the CL Psychiatry service at a major medical center in Honolulu, Hawaii. We hypothesized differing demographic trends than seen nationally and internationally, an increasing prevalence of elderly and substance abusing patients, and increasing consultation requests related to these issues.
Methods:
Retrospective data was gathered from 180 randomly selected patient records, identified as having a request for inpatient psychiatric consultation on the medical-surgical floors during identical 3-month periods in 2000 and 2005. Descriptive statistics were calculated. Chi-square and ANOVA were used to compare differences across time.
Results:
There were no significant differences by age, reason for referral, or diagnoses between the 2 years. Patients age 65 years and older accounted for only 16.6% of the consults. Caucasians accounted for 45.6% of consultations despite low prevalence rates in the population. Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (15%), Japanese (12.5%), Filipino (5.6%), and other Asians (10.6%) accounted for the majority of remaining patients. Depression/anxiety (27.4%), alcohol/drugs (21.8%), and agitation/ psychosis (20.5%) were the most frequent reasons for consultation. Substance use (32.5%), mood (16%), and cognitive (14.1%) disorders were the top diagnoses.
Conclusions:
As expected, the patient demographic data reflects a unique patient population served by the QMC CL service. Much of the consultation process, diagnoses, and treatment, however, are in line with our Mainland counterparts. There were no major differences in trends over time.
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