Management of psychosis and agitation in medical-surgical patients who have or are at risk for prolonged QT interval.

We review the literature on management of psychosis and agitation in medical-surgical patients who have or are at risk for prolonged QT interval, a risk factor for torsade de pointes (TdP), and we describe our protocols for treating these patients. We searched PubMed and PsycInfo for relevant studies and found few papers describing options for treating psychosis and agitation in these patients. Prolonged QTc interval has been more often associated with low-potency phenothiazines such as thioridazine; however, it may occur with high potency typical antipsychotics such as fluphenazine and haloperidol as well as with atypical antipsychotics such as quetiapine, risperidone, olanzapine, iloperidone, and particularly ziprasidone. Antipsychotics for which no association with prolonged QTc interval has been shown include lurasidone, clozapine, and aripiprazole. For patients who have risk factors for prolonged QTc interval but whose electrocardiograms do not show this, reasonable first choices include oral or intramuscular olanzapine or aripiprazole, followed by risperidone and quetiapine or oral or intramuscular haloperidol. For those who have prolonged QTc but that measures less than 500 ms, we limit the use of antipsychotics to aripiprazole, olanzapine, risperidone, or quetiapine. Finally, for patients who have a QTc of 500 ms or greater, we rely on aripiprazole, valproate, trazodone, and benzodiazepines.

Use of templates for clinical documentation in psychiatric evaluations-beneficial or counterproductive for residents in training?

In psychiatry, as in other disciplines, electronic templates are replacing handwritten records to meet health care financing regulations and requirements of third-party payers. We address whether these checklists are helpful for residents, especially those beginning training, in learning the foundational skills of their discipline and in recording a comprehensive set of patient data. An informal survey of our residents suggests that residents find the templates useful, though they have advantages and disadvantages. We also review relevant literature from psychiatry and other fields on the use of electronic templates and pose questions about how we might gauge the usefulness of the templates in residents' training and in obtaining valid data for clinical decision-making.

A description of the use of music therapy in consultation-liaison psychiatry.

Music therapy is gaining increasing recognition for its benefit in medical settings both for its salutary effects on physiological parameters and on psychological states associated with medical illness. This article discusses the role of a music therapist in consultation-liaison psychiatry, a specialty that provides intervention for medical and surgical patients with concomitant mental health issues.We describe the ways in which music therapy has been integrated into the consultation-liaison psychiatry service at Hahnemann University Hospital, a tertiary care facility and major trauma center in Philadelphia. The referral process and some of the techniques used in music therapy are explained. Anecdotal observations illustrate how a music therapist incorporates the various elements of music as well as the experiences of engaging in music-making to bring about changes in mood and facilitate expression of feelings and social interactions in patients who are having difficulty coping with the effects of illness and hospitalization. These methods have also been observed to have positive effects on the hospital staff by making available a means with which staff can express pressures inherent in direct patient care.