2017 Volume 29 Issue 4 Pages 336-344
In the fourth year since the launch of our psychiatric liaison team services, we compared days of hospitalization due to delirium and conducted a questionnaire survey of nurses in order to analyze the achievement of team services. According to the results of the questionnaire survey of 36 floor nurses, more than 80 ％ gave positive evaluations regarding the improvement of psychiatric symptoms such as delirium and anxiety and the improvement of care and communication derived from the involvement of the team. Examples of the improvements included nurses being able to directly consult the team about medications, and regular rounds conducted by the team. These activities can help nurses solve problems, which we consider to be a major achievement. We compared orthopedic patients suffering from postoperative delirium who were conventionally seen by psychiatrists and those whose treatment the liaison team was involved in. We found that the patients seen by the liaison team had fewer days of hospitalization and shorter disease duration, though the differences were not statistically significant. This might mean that the intervention by the liaison team after the onset of delirium may have been too late to make a difference compared to the conventional visit by psychiatrists. In the future, we need to address the issue of preventive intervention for delirium to achieve tangible results.
