University of Leicester
Browse

A national survey of psychiatrists' attitudes towards the physical examination.

Download (412.9 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2019-05-07, 13:49 authored by Sarah Baillon, Jonathan Murray
BACKGROUND: Studies have shown that most psychiatric patients do not receive a thorough physical examination (PE). AIM: To explore factors contributing to the underperformance of the PE on psychiatric patients. METHOD: All psychiatrists in the UK who were registered or affiliated to the Royal College of Psychiatrists were invited to complete an online survey regarding their attitudes towards PEs in psychiatry. RESULTS: Responses from 15% of the psychiatrists showed that most (89%) believe that the PE is important. The majority (61%) indicated that their PE skills had diminished since working in psychiatry and this was reported more by senior psychiatrists than junior trainees (64% vs. 49%). Most respondents considered that the PE should not be done by another type of health professional (45% vs. 28%). CONCLUSIONS: Likely reasons for poor performance of PEs include shortage of time and equipment, challenges associated with agitated and uncooperative patients, the perceived incongruence of the PE with the patient's presenting symptoms and a degree of skill atrophy, especially in senior psychiatrists which is leading to lack of supervision of junior trainees in this area. Further research is needed to investigate if strategies addressing these factors would improve the standard of PEs on psychiatric patients.

History

Citation

Journal of Mental Health, 2019

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF LIFE SCIENCES/School of Medicine/Department of Health Sciences

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Published in

Journal of Mental Health

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

eissn

1360-0567

Acceptance date

2018-08-14

Copyright date

2019

Publisher version

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09638237.2018.1521938

Notes

The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above.

Language

en

Usage metrics

    University of Leicester Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC