UTHSC LeBonheur Consultation Liaison
Drs. Ladoris L. Warren and Valerie K. Arnold lead the Child and Adolescent Consultation Liaison Psychiatry service for youth with complex medical conditions hospitalized on medical units at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital while providing fundamental training for child and adolescent psychiatry fellows, , psychology interns, pediatric residents, and medical students. The Child and Adolescent Consultation Liaison Psychiatry team works to conduct evaluations, provide support, and offer guidance to pediatric providers who are caring for youth with neurodevelopmental disorders, neuropsychiatric disorders, psychiatric sequelae of systemic illnesses, premorbid/prodromal psychosis in youth, depression, anxiety, feeding disorder, and eating disorders.
Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital is a 255-bed hospital located in the heart of Memphis and can be located by the “stitched heart” logo on the hospital which represents its founding. Le Bonheur has been recognized by “Best Children’s Hospitals” consecutively since 2010 and is the only Level 1 pediatric trauma center in the Mid-South. Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital provides specialized units for critical care such as the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), general pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), intermediate care unit (IMCU), neuro-intensive care unit, and cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU). Patients come from around the world, from different backgrounds and cultures with varying medical, social, and psychiatric needs for treatment at Le Bonheur. Families of patients receiving extended care at Le Bonheur are provided housing at the FedExFamilyHouse which is the first facility in Memphis to provide this service.
The Child and Adolescent Consultation Liaison Psychiatry team assist medical teams with the acute management of delirium, catatonia, neuropsychiatric diseases such as Autoimmune Encephalitis, and Pediatric Acute-Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome/Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcus. We see patients with chronic physical illness such as pediatric cancers, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell disease. Trainees and medical students learn to obtain an individual history, family history, mental status examination, physical and neurological evaluations, and interpret the results of medical test and psychological tests when making diagnoses. The Child and Adolescent Consultation Liaison Psychiatry team at Le Bonheur more commonly conduct suicide risk assessments, manage youth boarded to units while waiting on psychiatric hospital placement, assess unexplained medical symptoms, assist with adjustment to newly diagnosed medical illnesses, and determine the need for psychopharmacologic and/or psychologic intervention.
The Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists in this practice group are participating in TCAPES (Tennessee Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Education and Support) which is helping to integrate child and adolescent psychiatry into community-based primary care. By taking the inpatient consultation-liaison model to pediatric outpatient care, the psychiatrists provide telephone consultations to pediatricians for patients who may have a psychiatric condition. This service helps to provide psychiatric care to patients who may not be seen by a psychiatrist due to increased outpatient wait time.