The assessment and management of agitation and delirium in the general hospital.

Abstract

The Psychiatric Consultation Service at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) sees medical and surgical inpatients with comorbid psychiatric symptoms and conditions. Such consultations require the integration of medical and psychiatric knowledge. During their twice-weekly rounds, Dr Stern and other members of the Consultation Service discuss the diagnosis and management of conditions confronted. These discussions have given rise to rounds reports that will prove useful for clinicians practicing at the interface of medicine and psychiatry. Dr Stern is chief of the Psychiatric Consultation Service at MGH and is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS); Drs Celano and Gross are clinical fellows in psychiatry at HMS and fellows in adult psychiatry at MGH and McLean Hospital; Dr Huffman is director of Inpatient Psychiatry Services at MGH; Drs Freudenreich, Kontos, and Nejad are attending physicians on the Psychiatric Consultation Service at MGH; Ms Repper-DeLisi is a psychiatric nurse clinician on the Nursing Consultation Service at MGH; Dr Thompson is director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit at MGH and an associate professor of medicine at HMS. Dr Stern is an employee of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine; has served on the speaker's board of Reed Elsevier; is a stock shareholder in WiFiMed (Tablet MD); and has received royalties from Mosby/Elsevier and McGraw Hill. Dr Freudenreich has served as a consultant to Beacon Health Strategies and has received grant/research support from Pfizer and honoraria from Reed Medical Education. Drs Celano, Gross, Huffman, Kontos, Nejad, and Thompson and Ms Repper-DeLisi report no financial or other affiliations relevant to the subject of this article.