Do housemen take an adequate drinking history?

Transient psychotic episodes following recreational use of NRG‐3

“…Studies of history taking about alcohol or illicit drug use by both physicians and psychiatrists have highlighted deficits. [8][9][10][11] For example, a sur vey of 200 cases admitted to six acute psychiatric wards in two London hospitals found three-quarters had no record of using alcohol or drugs in their notes. 10 A recent study using an electronic case register of mental health patients to investigate khat use found that data on use of the drug was missing in 28 per cent of cases.…”

Are psychiatrists sexist? a study of bias in the assessment of psychiatric emergencies

“…The present study suggests that such an error is more likely to happen in women and those over the age of 29, because of the assumptions of their doctors. This is of particular concern in the light of statistics from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys which suggest that Routine surgical admissions (Barrison, 1980)Elderly medical admissions (Farrell & David, 1988)Psychiatric admissions (Naik & Jones, 1994 8% of women drink more than the recommended maximum of 14 units of alcohol per week, and a further 1% drink more than 35 units per week, a theoretically dangerous level (Goddard & Ikin, 1988). It has been said that "deeply ingrained sexism characterises much psychiatric practice" (Allen, 1986).…”

“…We know of no previous surveys of the taking of substance use or forensic histories. However, there have been surveys of alcohol history taking by housemen, mostly of routine surgical patients (Barrison et al 1980), by psychiatric registrars admitting patients to hospital (Parrel & David, 1988), and by doctors admitting the elderly with an acute medical condition (Naik & Jones, 1994). The results of these studies are compared with the present study in Table 3, which suggests that patients presenting with psychiatric emergencies are indeed the most likely to have a quantitative alcohol history recorded, with elderly medical cases the least likely (again suggesting ageist assumptions).…”

Developments in Liaison Psychiatry in the United Kingdom

“…Surveys have shown that approximately 25% of medical inpatients in British hospitals have an alco hol problem [Jarman and Kellett, 1979;Jariwalla et al, 1979;Lloyd et al, 1982], Some of these patients are referred to a psychiatrist during their hospital admission but there is evidence that the alcohol problems of many patients remain undetected [Barrison et al, 1980;Rowland et al, 1987] and there is clearly a need for improving their identifica tion and management.…”