Consultation-liaison services

The consultation-liaison psychiatry service is designed to respond rapidly to the clinical needs of both the outpatient clinics and the inpatient units of the hospital. Clinical activities include evaluation and treatment of medical patients and consultation with physicians, nurses, and allied health care personnel within the hospital. Interns participate in the service during a four-month rotation.

Physicians frequently request psychological assessment of children both pre- and post-surgery, consultation regarding the psychological factors contributing to a child’s physical condition, assistance in helping a child deal with difficult medical treatments, planning a program to help a child comply with medical treatment after an illness or surgery, consultation regarding treatment for a child admitted after a suicide attempt, or treating such psychophysiologic disorders as abdominal pain, headache, psychogenic vomiting, enuresis or encopresis.

Presently, the consultation-liaison ervice provides regular coverage to several of the major pediatric services, including general medical outpatient services, neurology, neurosurgery, urology, endocrinology, hematology-oncology, the pain program and to all services on the inpatient floors.

A variety of assessment and treatment approaches are used by the service, but behavioral interventions are most often employed because of the unique problems that present in the medical setting. Psychological assessments of all kinds are also very useful within the medical setting, and assessment plays a vital role in the work of the psychologists and interns on this service.

After the initial evaluation and treatment, the psychologist may provide outpatient services on a long-term basis, including individual, behavioral, or family therapy as needed. Other outpatient medical psychology services, which consist of outpatient psychiatric services to patients with medical complications, fall under the auspices of the outpatient services team. Interns devote three to four hours per week for the entire year to outpatient medical psychology.

Other opportunities to work with particular illnesses or clinics are available in medical psychology and are arranged on an individual basis, often in conjunction with research interests and opportunities. Examples of such opportunities include work with the HIV team, the renal transplant team, or the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.