Prepared by Washington University house staff and faculty, this handy guide is a quick reference for the hospital practice of psychiatric medicine in the inpatient psychiatric, consultation, and emergency settings. It addresses the most frequently encountered problems in these clinical settings and offers practical suggestions on how to obtain information, generate reasonable differential diagnoses, discriminate among diagnoses, and document clinical decisions.

Coverage includes style pointers on patient interview skills and clinical reasoning algorithms for the emergency setting. This electronic guide offers valuable assistance in documenting patient encounters in difficult medical-legal situations.