Parameters of consultee satisfaction with inpatient academic psychiatric consultation services: a multicenter study.

BACKGROUND: Consultation-liaison psychiatrists commonly perceive consultee satisfaction as a useful global measure of consultation-liaison service performance. No tool exists to measure consultee satisfaction. A single-site study at Columbia University Medical Center elicited ratings of parameters importantly contributing to consultee satisfaction within consultation-liaison services. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to assess the generalizability of the rating of importance of these parameters in a larger, multicenter sample. METHODS: From October 2013 to January 2014, a confidential and voluntary Web-based survey was distributed to 133 physicians at 7 academic centers in the United States asking them to rate the importance of 16 performance parameters (identified in the previous single-site study) in determining consultee satisfaction. RESULTS: Overall, 87 recipients (65%) responded to the survey. Among all the 16 items, there was no significant difference between sites in ratings of item importance. Of the 16 parameters, 9 received a mean rating in the "important" to "very important" range. Three items, "completion of consultation within 24 hours of request," "understanding the core questions being asked," and "practical and helpful management suggestions for medical staff" were rated as the most important. Quickly managing behavioral problems, management suggestions for nursing staff, verbal communication of recommendations, providing diagnostic clarification, facilitating transfer to inpatient psychiatry, and providing follow-up consultation were other parameters that were highly valued by consultees. CONCLUSIONS: We found good generalizability across academic medical centers for ratings of parameters important for consultee satisfaction with consultation-liaison services, which can provide the basis for a consultee satisfaction measurement tool.

How do you know your consult service is doing a good job? Generating performance measures for C-L service effectiveness.

BACKGROUND: There is no consensus in the literature on measures for evaluating the performance of general hospital Consultation-Liaison psychiatry services. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate what indicators might be used to this end. METHODS: We surveyed United States Psychosomatic Medicine fellowship directors (n = 53) about the use of performance measures for their psychiatric consultation services. Results of this survey led to the construction of a second survey, which was distributed to the representatives of services calling for psychiatric consultations at our hospital (n = 21); this survey sought to determine the importance of various performance parameters to overall consultee satisfaction. RESULTS: Sixty-three percent of responding psychiatric consult services do not use any of the parameters identified in the literature as performance measures. Consultee satisfaction was endorsed as a valuable performance indicator by 67.7% of them, but no satisfaction rating instrument was identified. The internal survey of consultees identified 11 of 16 candidate parameters as important or very important to consultee satisfaction, of which "consultant understands the core situation and the core question being asked" received the highest rating. CONCLUSIONS: Consultee satisfaction is perceived as a useful global measure of the effectiveness of a psychiatric consult service. We elicited parameters that can be used to create a measurement tool for consultee satisfaction with Consultation-Liaison services. The use of such a tool merits testing in a larger multicenter study.

Validation of the Multidimensional Affect and Pain Survey (MAPS).

UNLABELLED: The concurrent construct validity of the Multidimensional Affect and Pain Survey (MAPS) was determined in a sample of 100 oncology outpatients. As recommended by Jensen, we examined the frequency pattern of correlations between MAPS and standard questionnaires that reached a criterion level of significance. As predicted, the 17 subclusters in the MAPS Somatosensory Pain supercluster showed a higher mean frequency of criterion correlations with the 4 sensory-related groups of items from the MPQ and, equally important, a lower frequency of criterion correlations with unrelated constructs, POMS, and the MPQ Affective Class. The 8 subclusters in the MAPS Emotional Pain supercluster revealed a high frequency of correlations with related POMS and FACT-G scales and (negatively) with the KPS score; equally important, there were far fewer criterion correlations of these scales with unrelated MPQ sensory classes. The 5 subclusters of the MAPS Well-Being supercluster showed a high frequency of criterion correlations with the POMS Vigor/Activity Scale, related FACT-G scales, and the KPS score and lower frequencies of correlation with the unrelated MPQ sensory groups. In conclusion, the 101-item MAPS yields more information about a patient's pain, emotional, physical, and cognitive status than does a much longer test battery consisting of 191 items contained in the MPQ, POMS, and FACT-G questionnaires. PERSPECTIVE: This study demonstrates the validity of a new pain questionnaire developed objectively by multivariate cluster analysis rather than subjectively by expert opinion. MAPS assesses patients' somatosensory and emotional experiences, and feelings of well-being with greater scope and accuracy than a battery of questionnaires, and it does so in much less time.

A translation of the Multidimensional Affect and Pain Survey (MAPS) from English to Japanese.

This paper introduces the Japanese translation of the Multidimensional Affect and Pain Survey (MAPS), a 101 item questionnaire which has been demonstrated to possess a number of advantages over the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ). We also review validation and other studies which used translations of MAPS into Chinese, Czech, Italian and Russian to study cancer related and chronic pain.