Quality assurance of psychiatric consultations in somatic hospitals

Research has shown great variety in the clinical practice of consultation-liaison psychiatry in and between different countries. This paper presents the Norwegian experiences from a European collaborative study of quality management in consultation-liaison psychiatry. We describe a dynamic model for total quality management based on regular registration of some clinical data and the subsequent feed-back on changes of these. We discuss our experiences with this model and obstacles met in everyday work. Finally we point to different ways of implementing this method on a broader base in consultation-liaison psychiatry.