Attitudes of mental health clinicians toward perceived inaccuracy of a schizophrenia diagnosis in routine clinical practice.

BACKGROUND: Mental health clinicians have previously been reported to express reservations regarding the utility and accuracy of the psychiatric classification systems. In this study we aimed to examine clinicians' experiences with instances of perceived inaccuracy of a schizophrenia diagnosis. METHODS: Mental health clinicians (N = 175) participated in an online survey assessing prevalence and perceived reasons for inaccuracies of a schizophrenia diagnosis. Respondents included psychiatric ward directors (13.1%), senior psychiatrists and psychologists (40.5%), and psychiatry and clinical psychology residents (36%). RESULTS: Fifty-three percent of respondents reported encountering instances where a schizophrenia diagnosis was assigned even though clinical presentation did not match diagnostic criteria. Seventy-three percent of senior psychiatrists in a position to determine a diagnosis declared assigning schizophrenia even when controversial among clinical staff, and 15% of them declared doing so frequently. The likelihood of frequently assigning a schizophrenia diagnosis even when clearly controversial was predicted by the perception that an inaccurate diagnosis is assigned due to the presence of negative symptoms (OR 2.20, 95% CI 1.04-4.66, p = 0.039) and due to patient-related factors, such as the need to facilitate rehabilitation (OR 1.77, 95% CI 1.07-2.90, p = 0.024). CONCLUSIONS: Although a schizophrenia diagnosis is considered relatively stable and clear, our study indicates that, in clinical practice, the assignment of this diagnosis is frequently controversial. These controversies are associated with the perception that an inaccurate diagnosis is assigned due to diagnostic considerations, or due to the possibility that patients might benefit from such a diagnosis. Implications and limitations for psychiatric practice and discourse are discussed.

To resuscitate or not to resuscitate: a logistic regression analysis of physician-related variables influencing the decision.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether variables in physicians' backgrounds influenced their decision to forego resuscitating a patient they did not previously know. METHODS: Questionnaire survey of a convenience sample of 204 physicians working in the departments of internal medicine, anaesthesiology and cardiology in 11 hospitals in Israel. RESULTS: Twenty per cent of the participants had elected to forego resuscitating a patient they did not previously know without additional consultation. Physicians who had more frequently elected to forego resuscitation had practised medicine for more than 5 years (p=0.013), estimated the number of resuscitations they had performed as being higher (p=0.009), and perceived their experience in resuscitation as sufficient (p=0.001). The variable that predicted the outcome of always performing resuscitation in the logistic regression model was less than 5 years of experience in medicine (OR 0.227, 95% CI 0.065 to 0.793; p=0.02). CONCLUSION: Physicians' level of experience may affect the probability of a patient's receiving resuscitation, whereas the physicians' personal beliefs and values did not seem to affect this outcome.