VMO or Consultant Psychiatrists in the Bowral Mental Health Service

Gradually, over time the mental health service at Bowral has been able to enhance the services provided by their Consultant Psychiatrists. They have increased from one psychiatrist providing one day a week to now two Consultant Psychiatrists providing sessions - one on Monday and the other on Tuesdays.They have been joined by a senior Psychiatric Registrar doing their six month rural placement. The Registrar attends two days each week. On half a day they work with the Bowral Drug Health Service to ensure that patients with substance use issues are assessed for concurrent mental health issues. On the remaining one and a half days the Registrar will assess and review patients referred to them by staff of the Mental Health Service. This means that patients referred to the service by their general practitioners, by the hospital, or other health service providers, or by their families or themselves - will have a more rapid access to specialist psychiatric assessments or reviews.If the patient is already in the care of a general practitioner it is most likely that the GP will continue to be involved in their care and will be advised by the Consultant Psychiatrist or Registrar. This ensures that there is continuity of care provided to the patient and their care can be managed more effectively by their general practitioner.The Adolescent Mental Health service also has access to a VMO Psychiatrist who specialises in assessing and treating young people and adolescents. This specialist has access to the Centre of Youth (CoY) on Tuesdays for a six hour clinic. Referrals made to the CoY staff may be passed on to the Consultant Psychiatrist for assessment and review in the weekly clinic.Older persons (65+) with mental illnesses also have opportunity to be reviewed by a VMO Psychiatrist who attends Bowral Community Health Centre for a monthly clinic. He works closely with the Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) and with the VMO Geriatrician at Bowral Hospital. This is an important service, particularly with the number of Aged Care facilities in the Wingecarribee Shire and the higher than NSW average of older persons in the community.Finally, there is another psychiatric consultation service available through the Bowral Mental Health Service which is specific to those persons with the dual diagnosis of intellectual disability and mental illness. Often these issues are expressed as challenging behaviours and, as most of these patients are in residential care, it is problematic for the staff of those residential services to find the best way of managing those behaviours.Clearly, the use and value of having access to the VMO Consultant Psychiatrists is to ensure that the patients who use the service are given the most appropriate treatments applicable to their special conditions. Referrals made to the Consultants are processed by the intake worker and the Bowral Mental Health team with priority based on urgency. The value of the service provided by these Consultant specialists is indicated by the high rate of uptake of the appointments that are allocated to patients of the service.