Prompt letters to reduce non-attendance applying evidence based practice 英文参考文献.docVIP

BMC Psychiatry BioMedCentral Research article Open Access Prompt letters to reduce non-attendance: applying evidence based practice Mahesh Jayaram?1, Ranganath D Rattehalli*?2 and Ihsan Kader?3 Address: 1Consultant Psychiatrist, Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, Bridge House, Balm Road, Leeds LS10 2TP, UK, 2Specialist Registrar, Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, Millfield House, Kirk Lane, Leeds LS19 7LX, UK and 3Consultant Psychiatrist, Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, Bridge House, Balm Road, Leeds LS10 2TP, UK Email: Mahesh Jayaram - Mahesh.Jayaram@leedspft.nhs.uk; Ranganath D Rattehalli* - rdrattehalli@; Ihsan Kader - Ihsan.Kader@leedspft.nhs.uk * Corresponding author ?Equal contributors Published: 16 November 2008 Received: 6 March 2008 Accepted: 16 November 2008 BMC Psychiatry 2008, 8:90 doi:10.1186/1471-244X-8-90 This article is available from: /1471-244X/8/90 ? 2008 Jayaram et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Non-attendance rates in psychiatric outpatient clinics have been a topic of considerable interest. It is measured as an indicator of quality of service provision. Failed attendances add to the cost of care as well as having an adverse impact on patients leading to missing medications, delay in identifying relapses and increasing waiting list time. Recent trials have demonstrated that prompting letters sent to patients led to a decrease in non-attendance rates. We applied this evidence based practice in our community mental health setting to evaluate its impact. Methods: Using a before and after study design, we sent prompting letters to all patients due to attend outpatient clinic appointments fo