Psychiatric Bulletin (2006) 30: 77. doi: 10.1192/pb.30.2.77-a
© 2006 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2006) 30: 77
© 2006 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Wyatt’s Practical Psychiatric Practice: Forms and Protocols for Clinical Use (3rd edn)
Richard Jed Wyatt & Robert H. Chew
Philip Timms, Consultant Psychiatrist
START Team, South London and Maudsley Trust, London
Washington DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2005, $100.50, 240 pp (with
CD-ROM). ISBN: 1585621099
To paraphrase René Magritte, this is not a book. As the title
suggests, it is an extensive set of A4-sized sheets for use in everyday
clinical practice, ring-bound to allow for easy photocopying. The two sections
for clinicians provide basic record-keeping forms and rating scales. The two
sections for patients and families provide information about psychiatric
disorders and psychiatric medications. It is designed for the American market
and so includes medical insurance forms, invoices and a final collection
notice for those pesky late payers.
The idea of assembling a comprehensive set of clinical papers is terrific.
However, this example sits uneasily with the needs of UK National Health
Service practice. Most of the clinician forms are redundant, as trusts will
usually have their own proformas. The tick box format of many sections
encourages standardised collection of data, but with no tie-in to any database
engine to aggregate and analyse the data collected. The rating scales might be
useful but are available from other sources. The information for patients and
families is admirably thorough, accurate and (on the whole) up to date, but is
written in a jargonistic, technical style. I ran some of these sheets through
the Flesch Reading Ease test, a standardised scale in which higher scores
indicate greater readability. They averaged out at around 20, compared with a
recommended level of 60-70 for public information. There is little information
about psychological therapies or their effectiveness.
The bundled CD contains electronic PDF files of all the documents in the
package. They cannot be altered but if you really want to customise them for
your own use, it’s the work of a moment to copy the text and paste it
into a word processor for editing.
So, can I recommend it for UK practice? Not as it stands, although it
provides a useful example of the tools that should be available to every
psychiatrist. It might be helpful in private practice, although the difficulty
in customising the forms would limit its appeal. I suspect that the patient
information sheets might more often be used as aides memoire by the
doctor.
