Current State of Psychological Support to Inpatient in Other Department

—Including a Difficult Case to Support—

Abstract

Background : We receive requests for the psychological support to inpatients who are hospitalized with physical diseases in other departments. Method : In this research, we investigated medical records of those patients for whom we provided treatment with other departments’ doctors from January, 2011 to December, 2012 including difficult cases to support. Results : The number of inpatient cases that we performed the psychological support was 29. The number was significantly decreased since 2006 when we had 106 cases per annum. We believe that having a palliative care center which was established in 2009 could be one reason for this change. With regard to malignant tumor patients, the cases in whom the palliative care center intervened were 31%. Conclusion : After the palliative care center was established, the requests of the psychological support for malignant tumor patients significantly decreased. However, there are still many intervention requests to our department, and the palliative care center and our department intervene in many inpatients at the same time. As a role of psychosomatic medicine, we contact closely with the leading and other departments, as well as provide psychological support to patients and families. We believe it is necessary to examine an appropriate point of intervention as a psychosomatic whole team.