What do you do with psych patients?

[Arctickat]

Bet they don't call the bus company for the schedule when they get chest pain.

[Chief1C]

Someone probably does. They confuse 9-1-1 with the number for cab companies all the time.

[island emt]

Why are you sedating them and strapping them to a backboard? Do they have a spinal injury?

Seems to be a blanket protocol to get sued to me.

I'm still looking for an answer to this ??????????

The whole " do no HARM " thing ..............

Transporting them to an appropriate facility is fine, Why are you sedating them?

Are they violent?

Are they threatening to do harm to themselves or others?

If so then they can be cuffed to stretcher and have Law enforcement come along for the ride.

[Arctickat]

Strapping to the backboard is something that I have never had to do, and likely never will. Just adding 3 more straps to the cot and soft restraints is usually sufficient for me. I will throw in chemical restraints if the patient continually worms his way out of the soft restraints. I don't like to use hard cuffs if I can avoid it, although they have been used thrice in my career with LEO with us.

[Secouriste]

I only had one time to restrain a patient for transport, we used this fellow:

http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=567644MatelasMFR1005.jpg'>

We do not use the backboard, because the hands are still free...

On the more global matter of psych patients, I live in an area where we have enough facilites. When dealing with the patient, we always think "safety first" and try the person to agree with us and follow our advice.

If the person is dangerous for him/herself and the others, we call the police and a physician who can issue an order of forced transport. Then, depending on the patient we take police officers with us in the ambulance.

I remember that violence psych guys, who was transported on the ambulance floor, pinned down by 3 cops and a fellow-EMT...

[Arctickat]

Cool, what do you use the helmet for?

[Secouriste]

HEAD-BUTT

That pic was found on a medical stuff retailer, so I guess they wanted to "label" that product witht he helmet to imply "look, the fire dept. use it!".

By the way, this is a F1 helmet. The silver is the traditional color of the Paris Fire Brigade Helmet. Those where designed by the french of CGF-Gallet, which was sold to the US company MSA. That design became very popular over the world and if the F1 wasn't always bought, it was copied a lot.

http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=147509LecasqueF1duLoiret45.jpg'>

[Arctickat]

HEAD-BUTT

Chuckle

[YoungEMT95]

We have a psych facility right at one o the two closest hospitals we transport to

[RuralKSEMS]

I'm not sure what you mean by out of service? And I didn't say we don't go to psych patients

We don't do transfers. We are a rural service with a 30 minute transport time to any of 6 hospitals.

I know the way things currently work are not quite right, but I'm not sure what we can do to change that.

If I have a patient who has already harmed themselves I would not be comfortable bypassing a hospital that could treat the immediate life threat.

I'm thankful for the input!

We are a rural service also. We, however, are lucky that our director and medical director both allow us to travel to the nearest appropriate facility for the pt. If it's the hospital 10 minutes away or 2 hours away. If the pt is unstable, then it's nearest facility and we transfer from there in the appropriate manner (helicopter called in or one of our 3 ambulances in our service). We do have two part time paramedics that can sedate as needed but they can also be treated in the local hospital before transport. We are also allowed to restrain for our protection or that of others if we have the okay by online medical protocol or we can have a police officer ride with us.