Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T11:51:21.163Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Sharing medical records: comparison of general psychiatric patients with somatisation disorder patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Nick Goddard
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AZ
Morris Bernadt*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry, 103 Denmark Hill, London SE5 9RS
Simon Wessely
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry, 103 Denmark Hill, London SE5 9RS
*
Correspondence
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The responses of somatisation disorder (SD) patients to reading their main clinical summary were compared with those of general psychiatric patients, to assess whether the sharing of information and psychiatic opinion might help in the management of SD. Overall the SD patients responded favourably on 8 out of 11 measures; 28 of the 30 (93%) thought it was a good idea to have read the summary and 26 (87%) thought it had provided helpful information. Significantly more of the SD patients (57% compared with 27% of the general psychiatric patients) had their concerns about undiagnosed illness increase as a result of reading their clinical summary.

Type
Original Papers
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 © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

References

American Psychiatric Association (1987) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edn. revised) (DSM–III–R). Washington, DC: APA.Google Scholar
Bernadt, M., Gunning, L. & Quenstedt, M. (1991) Patients' access to their own psychiatric records. British Medical Journal, 303, 967.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J. (1969) Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioural Sciences. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Damian, D. & Tattershall, M. H. N. (1991) Letters to patients: improving communication in cancer care. Lancet, 338, 923925.Google Scholar
Gilhooly, M. L. M. & McGhee, S. M. (1991) Medical records: practicalities and principles of patient possession. Journal of Medical Ethics, 17, 138143.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kashner, T. M., Rost, K., Smith, G. R., et al (1992) The impact of a psychiatric consultation letter on the expenditures and outcomes of care for patients with somatization disorder. Medical Care, 30, 811821.Google Scholar
Laugharne, R. & Stafford, A. (1996) Access to records and client held records for people with mental illness. Psychiatric Bulletin, 20, 338341.Google Scholar
McKenzie, C. R. & Charlson, M. E. (1986) Standards for the use of ordinal scales in clinical trials. British Medical Journal, 292, 4043.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (1970) Classification of Occupations. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Smith, G. R., Monson, R. A. & Ray, B. S. (1986) Psychiatric consultation in somatization disorder. New England Journal of Medicine, 314, 14071413.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.