Psychiatric consultation in general practitioners' daily practice: a qualitative study on the experience of consultation-liaison psychiatry interventions in primary care settings in French-speaking Switzerland.

Background: Mental disorders are frequent in primary care settings, which is challenging for primary care physicians. In Neuchâtel (Switzerland), a Consultation-Liaison psychiatrist integrated three primary care group practices, proposing both clinical interventions and supervisions/psychiatric training. Primary care physicians' experience regarding this collaboration was investigated.

[« Group medical practices » project : collaboration between primary care medicine and institutional public psychiatry].

Collaboration between primary care medicine and psychiatry is a well-known challenge. In order to improve access to psychological care for patients undergoing primary care, the « group medical practices » project proposes a collaborative care model in which a psychiatrist employed by a public psychiatric institution integrates group medical practices in order to provide assistance to primary care physicians. It is thus able to evaluate patients directly in the practices and to offer supervision and consilium spaces to primary care physicians.

General practitioners referring patients to specialists in tertiary healthcare: a qualitative study.

Background: There is a large and unexplained variation in referral rates to specialists by general practitioners, which calls for investigations regarding general practitioners' perceptions and expectations during the referral process. Our objective was to describe the decision-making process underlying referral of patients to specialists by general practitioners working in a university outpatient primary care center.

Methods: Two focus groups were conducted among general practitioners (10 residents and 8 chief residents) working in the Center for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisanté) of the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland.

[From a different angle : supervision of general internal medicine practitioners by psychiatrists and its benefits].

The supervision of general internal medicine practitioners by psychiatrists is an opportunity to take a step back from the daily medical practice. In this article, we adopt an interdisciplinary perspective on these supervisory practices, combining a number of insights and perspectives from both psychiatry and sociology. We aim at initiating a broader and more rigorous reflection on such supervisions, which remain little theorized although they are clearly appreciated by those who benefit from them.

[Assumption of sincerity in medicine].

Medical practice is always embedded in time and space, whatever its scientific and technical progress could claim as universal truths. The postulate of sincerity is one those contextual elements but it has become so pervasive that a gloss of evidence surrounds it. This situation is at risk of loosing its depth, as much as its limits.