Due to the demand for psychiatric hospital beds, once an ER or CSU team is notified that an appropriate bed is available and ready for a patient, it is usually immediately accepted. As a result, patients can be transported to an inpatient psychiatric bed 24 hours a day.
A good rule of thumb is to remember that most psychiatric hospitals collect new information and develop treatment plans during the morning. Historically, every morning the entire care team would go from patient to patient, completing interviews and exams, until they had made a circuit around the entire facility. As a result, this process is traditionally called morning rounds.
Depending on the type of psychiatric hospital a patient is admitted to, morning rounds may be more or less formal, but overwhelmingly most treatment planning occurs in the morning. After rounds, the remainder of the business day is typically spent activating care plans. Staff will also use this time to coordinate with other facilities, meet with family or medical decision makers, or problem solve challenges that have come up with the current care plan.
Unless it is absolutely unavoidable, the evenings typically are set aside for a period of rest, and if appropriate, visitation from friends and family.
So if a patient arrives to their hospital bed in the afternoon or evening, they will have likely missed formal rounds for the day. It is very typical that a person spends their first day on a unit becoming accustomed to the physical layout of the unit itself and learning about the members of their care team.
Additionally, nursing and administrative team members will drop in to ensure that no critical information was missed when discussing the workup thus far with the ER. Additionally, staff will make sure the hospital records accurately reflect key information gathered for every patient, including demographics, insurance information, health history, and emergency contacts.
Not every psychiatric hospital has a psychiatrist on-site 24-hours a day. Those that do have a psychiatrist at night usually have that physician focus on any emergencies that occur. This night physician will then pass on critical information to the daytime team that handles more standard care during normal business hours. As a result, people often will first meet their psychiatrist the day after they are admitted, during the next set of morning rounds.
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