Your guidelines for psychiatric patients should address the following questions, says Hartmut Gross, MD, FACEP, associate professor for the department of emergency medicine at Medical College of Georgia in Augusta:
- Do your current triage criteria ensure that psychiatric patients receive appropriate care?
- What mechanisms are in place to deter elopement?
- Is there a lockup room? Do you need one?
- How do you prevent patients from injuring themselves while in the ED?
- Do staff know how to intervene and defuse an angry or violent patient?
- Do you have enough staff to have one potentially function as a sitter while you do work-up on a psychiatric patient?
- What happens if you see the patient leaving? How do you stop him or her?
- What protocols are in place regarding use of restraints? Are you compliant with them?
- Do your staff know how to do a psychiatric evaluation? Is there a template or checkoff list they can use if they don’t do this often?
- Do you know where to send patients? What resources are available in the hospital and in the community?
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