Psychscape has a post about "A Psychiatric Screening Tool for Medical Inpatients".
The following is an excerpt:
Psychiatric comorbidity is common among patients admitted to the general medicine service of a hospital with the prevalence ranging anywhere from 15% to 50%. These patients receive more diagnostic tests, have longer lengths of stay, and have higher hospital costs compared with patients who have no comorbidity. Researchers from New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Medical College of Cornell University have developed a screening tool to assess a range of psychiatric conditions in medical patients, including cognition and behavior, depressive symptoms, anxiety, drug and alcohol history, and the patient's desire to see a psychiatrist. The Cornell Psychiatric Screen is published in the current issue of Psychosomatics.This brief screening instrument was designed to be administered by nonpsychiatrists. It consists of seven items requiring information that is readily available upon admission and can quickly and reliably identify hospitalized patients with underlying psychiatric comorbidity who are in need of a psychiatric evaluation. The questionnaire was developed and tested in four phases: selection of candidate items, test-retest reliability, selection of final items, and validation. After the scale was developed, its properties were tested among three independent cohorts of patients (N=106, N=299, N=206).
I wonder what Las Vegas oddsmakers would say about the efficacy of the instrument.
I wonder if Dr. Ron Turco knows about this instrument or does he just rely on loonies for his professional opinions about stuff?
NOTE: I've got better things to do than erase the childish, immature, psychotic, obscene comments from looney Roger Weidner and his gang of illiterate morons, so just put your opinions at the Johnhays.net Forum.