Care setting overview
Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry
BH-CLPsychiatric assessment and recommendations for patients whose behavioral health needs intersect with acute or complex medical care, delivered in close partnership with the primary medical or surgical team.
- Care model
- Psychiatric consultation within medical and surgical care
- Typical pace
- Focused, question-driven assessment with same-day or serial follow-up based on medical acuity
- Population
- Medically ill patients in emergency, inpatient, surgical, obstetric, neurologic, oncology, transplant, and other specialty settings
Common presentations
- Delirium, agitation, catatonia, psychosis, mood symptoms, and substance withdrawal
- Capacity questions, treatment refusal, unexplained behavior change, and psychiatric medication management during medical illness
- Psychological responses to serious illness, high-risk procedures, pregnancy, neurologic disease, and complex disposition
PMHNP priorities
- Answer the requesting team’s clinical question while completing an independent safety and medical-psychiatric assessment
- Distinguish delirium and medical or medication effects from primary psychiatric illness
- Communicate specific recommendations, contingencies, responsibility, and follow-up
Care team
PMHNPs, consultation-liaison psychiatrists, medical and surgical clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, psychologists, rehabilitation clinicians, ethics consultants, and specialty teams