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Psychiatrists' letters to general practitioners: choosing the right format

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

R. G. Pether ,
B. A. Johnson ,
G. O'Donoghue  and
J. Connolly
R. G. Pether
Affiliation:
Royal London Hospital, London E1 1BB
B. A. Johnson
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and MRC Psychopharmacology Research Unit, Oxford University, Littlemore Hospital, Oxford OX4 4XN
G. O'Donoghue
Affiliation:
St Senam's Hospital, Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland
J. Connolly
Affiliation:
Maudsley Hospital, London SE5 8AZ
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Letters from psychiatrists to general practitioners (GPs) should provide an appropriate content in a format which is easy to write and assimilate. For content, GPs have requested “key items” (diagnosis, suicide risk, treatment, prognosis and follow-up), and an explanation which is educational (Williams & Wallace, 1974; Pullen & Yellowlees, 1985; Margo, 1982). For format, GPs preferred a one page letter with two or three sub-headings in a survey based on one fictitious case (Yellowless & Pullen, 1984). Real letters from psychiatrists in one district averaged one and three quarter pages with four subheadings (Prasher et al, 1992). GPs' opinions about actual changes in the format and content of letters sent to them have not been reported.

Type
Original articles
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 17 , Issue 7 , July 1993 , pp. 414 - 415
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1993

References

Margo, L. (1982) Letters from psychiatrists to general practitioners. Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 6, 139–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prasher, V. P., Fitzmaurice, D., Krishnan, V. H. R. & Oyebode, F. (1992) Communication between general practitioners and psychiatrists. Psychiatric Bulletin, 16, 468–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pullen, I. M. & Yellowlees, A. J. (1985) Is communication improving between general practitioners and psychiatrists? British Medical Journal, 290, 31–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, P. & Wallace, B. R. (1974) General practitioners and psychiatrists – do they communicate? British Medical Journal, i, 505–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yellowlees, A. J. & Pullen, I. M. (1984) Communication between psychiatrists and general practitioners. What sort of letter should psychiatrists write? Health Bulletin, 42, 285–296.Google Scholar
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