Analysis of referrals received by a psychiatric unit in a general hospital Part2: analysis and discussion of research results

Abstract

The study sought to analyse the referrals received by a psychiatric unit in a general hospital in the Western Cape by studying the referral letters and the referral responses. Part 1 of the report reviewed the need to analyse these referrals and described the research design adopted to study this phenomenon.The study sought to determine which departments were referring patients and which patients were being referred. The completeness and the appropriateness of the referrals were also studied. This secnd part of the research report will present and discuss the resarch results. The major inferences drawn form this study are that healh care workers have a poor concept of what information the psychiatric unit needs and about the scope and function of the unit. The poor feedback from the psychiatric unit to the referral source is indicative of the poor communication amongst the health care team members.