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Medical Psychiatry Units (MPUs), also known as Complexity Intervention Units, represent an important innovation for integrating medical and behavioral healthcare in the hospital setting, thereby reducing the need for sequential medical and psychiatric hospitalization. As US hospitals face an increased demand for mental health services, interest in the MPU model is gaining momentum. However, there is no shared definition for what constitutes an MPU, and significant variation exists among units across the United States that have been designated as an MPU. The lack of a unified definition for MPUs results in significant variability and poses challenges for creating new MPUs and studying existing MPUs. To address this gap, the Medical-Psychiatry Unit Consortium recruited a panel of MPU experts to conduct a consensus study. The consortium used a survey to assess the relative importance of various characteristics of MPUs within the following categories: Structural Organization, Environment and Design, Spectrum of Care, Staffing and Culture of Care. After two rounds of a modified Delphi process, consensus was achieved with regard to which characteristics are necessary or preferred, vs. not necessary or harmful. The necessary or preferred characteristics include those that would be expected on a general medical unit, such as having cardiac telemetry monitoring capabilities, as well as characteristics typical of a psychiatric unit, such as locked unit doors, locked cabinets for patient belongings, and common area or milieu. Overall, this suggests that an ideal MPU combines the ability to provide acute medical care with acute psychiatric care. Notably, staffing and culture of care emerged as categories with the highest ranking of necessary characteristics, outweighing environment, design, or the breadth of services offered. These findings suggest that MPU experts feel teamwork and having a shared mission are critical components of effective MPUs and highlights the importance of staff recruitment and training., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Pain is the primary symptomatic manifestation of sickle cell disease (SCD), an inherited hemoglobinopathy. The characteristics that influence pain experiences and outcomes in SCD are not fully understood. The primary objective of this study was to use multivariable modeling to examine associations of biopsychosocial variables with a disease-specific measure of pain interference known as pain impact. We conducted a secondary analysis of data from the Global Research Network for Data and Discovery national SCD registry. A total of 657 children and adults with SCD were included in the analysis. This sample was 60% female with a median age of 34 (interquartile range 26-42 years) and a chronic pain prevalence of 64%. The model accounted for 58% of the variance in pain impact. Low social (P < .001) and emotional (P < .001) functioning, increasing age (P = .004), low income (P < .001), and high acute painful episodes (P = .007) were most strongly associated with high pain impact in our multivariable model. Additionally, multivariable modeling of pain severity and physical function in 2 comparable samples of registry participants revealed that increasing age and low social functioning were also strongly associated with higher pain severity and low physical functioning. Overall, the results suggest that social and emotional functioning are more strongly associated with pain impact in individuals with SCD than previously studied biological modifiers such as SCD genotype, hemoglobin, and percentage fetal hemoglobin. Future research using longitudinally collected data is needed to confirm these findings. PERSPECTIVE: This study reveals that psychosocial (ie, social and emotional functioning) and demographic (ie, age) variables may play an important role in predicting pain and pain-related outcomes in SCD. Our findings can inform future multicenter prospective longitudinal studies aimed at identifying modifiable psychosocial predictors of adverse pain outcomes in SCD., (Copyright © 2023 United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Competing Interests: The authors report no financial relationships with commercial interests.

Little is known about the relationships among self-efficacy, social determinants of health, and health outcomes in adults living with sickle cell disease (SCD). We conducted mediation analyses examining the relationships among health literacy, perceived stigma, self-efficacy, and health outcomes in an online cohort of adults living with SCD. The health outcomes explored were physical and mental health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and pain interference; covariates included gender, disease severity, and depressive symptoms. Data came from a cross-sectional, descriptive study of 60 adults with SCD. Perceived stigma and self-efficacy had significant relationships with the study outcomes, while health literacy did not. Self-efficacy partially mediated the relationship between perceived stigma and physical HRQOL, when controlling for depressive symptoms. Future research should investigate the influence of stigma and self-efficacy on health outcomes in patients with SCD and consider stigma when creating interventions to modify self-efficacy.