Satisfaction with psychiatric services in the emergency department

The move to provide psychiatric services within the general health care system has resulted in emergency departments becoming the means of access to acute psychiatric care in Australia (Gillette & Bucknell, 1996). Triage within the emergency departments ensures that patients are reviewed and treated in a timely manner, in accordance with the urgency of the presenting problem. The National Triage Scale was developed as a clinical tool for this purpose for use in Australia and New Zealand (Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, 1994). However, this scale tends to attach lower priority to psychiatric issues (Smart et al, 1998).