Psychiatric consultation: compliance and level of satisfaction with recommendations.

As a measure of the effectiveness of psychiatric consultation, we assessed the level of compliance and consultee satisfaction with our recommendations in 55 consecutive cases. Overall compliance with the consultants' recommendations was 90% and did not vary significantly for the different types of recommendations. The medical staff felt that 60-70% of the recommendations had a positive effect on patient care and that only 1-2% had a negative effect. The remaining recommendations either had no effect or could not be evaluated by the medical staff. These favorable results have implications both for the care of patients, and the training of psychiatric residents.