RESUMO
Objectives. The national Department of Health strongly advocates the strengthening of primary health care systems; and recommendations for appropriate level of care referrals exist. Very few published data on the scope of current ambulatory specialised psychiatric hospital services in South Africa are currently available; making it difficult to assess whether these recommendations are being followed. As a starting point; an audit was conducted to obtain a profile of new non-urgent general adult patients seen at Stikland Hospital with a view to evaluating system needs and demands. Methods. The folders of 103 consecutively seen patients were selected for retrospective review. Patient demographic; referral and assessment information was entered into a single database. Descriptive statistics were compiled with reference to the above variables using SPSS. Results. Overall 58.3 of referrals were from the private sector. More than a third (36.7) of referral letters stated no clear reason for referral and 41.7 no psychiatric diagnosis; and 29.1 of patients were referred without psychotropic medication being started. On assessment 62.1 of patients were found to have a single Axis I diagnosis. Despite virtually no referral letters making any mention of them; substance use disorders (30.1); personality traits/disorders (35.9) and co-morbid medical illness (36.7) were commonly found on assessment. Conclusions. A significant portion of the patients in our sample could have been managed at primary care level and were referred prematurely. The overall quality of referral letters was poor; and they lacked vital information required for appropriate preassessment decision making. Undergraduate training focusing on these skills should be intensified; and consideration should be given to incorporating aspects of our findings into primary health care updates