Psychiatric day hospital discharge summaries

Abstract

With the increasing emphasis on community care (Turner, 1986) the psychiatric day hospital has been seen as an alternative (Tantam, 1985) or as a complement (Tyrer, 1985) to in-patient care. Associated with this is the development of new styles of working with patients such as the ‘multidisciplinary team’ with those looking after individual patients being referred to as ‘key workers’ (Watts & Bennett, 1983). In our day hospital the keyworker has considerable responsibility for history-taking, organising a treatment programme and communicating with other professionals, including writing the discharge summary.