title: Physicians' attitudes toward integrating consultation-liaison psychiatric services in four major general hospitals in Tehran.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Our objective was to validate a scale for the evaluation of attitudes of physicians toward integrating consultation-liaison psychiatric services and then apply it among the nonpsychiatrist attending physicians of four major general hospitals in Tehran.
  
  
  METHODS
  The eight-item Doctors' Attitudes toward Collaborative Care for Mental Health (DACC-MH) Scale was translated to Persian and back-translated to English by nonphysician translators and was presented for expert opinion to four psychiatrists for assessment of face validity. The validated questionnaires were presented to nonpsychiatrist attending physicians of four major general university-affiliated hospitals with consultant-liaison psychiatric services in Tehran, and the returned questionnaires were analyzed using the 21st version of SPSS software. The score for each physician was generated by counting positive responses of the eight items questioned.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 300 questionnaires presented, 193 (64.3%) were returned. The mean score of the respondents was 6.62 (±1.33) for the Farsi version of the DACC-MH which was significantly higher than the assumed mean score of 4, according to the independent-sample t test (P<.001). The mean score of the respondents for the first four items of the DACC-MH was 3.49, which was significantly higher than that of the second four items of the scale which was 3.13 (P<.01) according to the Wilcoxon test.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The respondents have an above-average positive attitude toward integrating consultation-liaison psychiatric services for the management of psychiatric disorders among inpatients. They had a more positive attitude toward requesting psychiatric consultations than managing the patients' psychiatric disorders themselves.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Taleghani Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Electronic address: mostafa_hamdieh@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Mostafa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hamdieh
authors.affiliation: Taleghani Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Seyedshahab
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Banihashem
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Taleghani Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Narges
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Beyraghi
authors.affiliation: Roozbeh Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Maryam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Abbasinejad
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Psychology, Karaj Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran.
authors.forename: Farokh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hagh-Ranjbar
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005260:Female; D006769:Hospitals, General; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D008297:Male; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010820:Physicians; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Consultation-liaison psychiatric services; General hospitals; Physicians' attitudes