Will evidence be enough to promote interactive communication for the benefit of patients?

摘要

TO THE EDITOR: Foy and colleagues (1) provided evidence to support common sense, showing that patients with depression or diabetes have better outcomes when family physicians and specialists work together as a team, with different kinds of collaboration (for example, e-mail or face-to-face conversations).We recently conducted a study to improve quality of care, specifically evaluating the follow-up after discharge in a series of 176 persons aged 15 to 25 years who attempted suicide (mean age, 20 years) and were hospitalized (mean duration, 1.1 day) in the 9 main hospitals in Picardie, France. Among the 90% of persons who were referred for follow-up (2% declined, 5% did not require follow-up, and 3% were missing data), 42% had to make the appointment themselves, despite the importance of follow-up in the days after an attempt, especially for adolescents. As one would expect, significantly more patients (P < 0.001) completed follow-up when the appointments were planned during the hospitalization (60%) than when the patient had to make the appointment (40%).