Am J Psychiatry 1979; 136:787-790
Copyright © 1979 by American Psychiatric Association
Emergency room medical clearance: an educational problem
MP Weissberg
The term "medically clear" has a greater capacity to mislead than to inform
correctly. The overuse of this term, especially in emergency room settings,
may indicate difficulties in medical education and in the
consultation/referral process between psychiatry and other specialties;
further, it results in poor patient care. Nonpsychiatric physicians may
prematurely refer patients as medically clear because of their
unfamiliarity or discomfort with clinical psychiatry. Psychiatrists often
ask for medical clearance of patients to hide their discomfort with or
antipathy toward clinical medicine. The use of emergency room settings for
interspecialty collaboration and training helps minimize the underlying
difficulties that lead to the use of this term by fostering psychiatric
skills in nonpsychiatrists and a sense of medical identity in
psychiatrists.
