Published
we have a psych er where they go immediately if they have no medical complaints. a provider from fast track does a PE ( labs are drawn in the psych er) when they are ready for d/c or to go up to the floor. The ones with medical complaints go to the medical area until they get medical clearance, and get immediate one to one observation by a PCT. we have had elopements from the medical area, 2 in fact that i can think of recently, one of those will be a lawsuit i am sure.
While in school I had clinical in an ER in Georgia. I was surprised to see how the staff and physicians reacted to psych pt's. The doctor was freaking out and wanted the patient out of the ER ASAP. Control was a major problem. Not many nurses felt comfortable working with them. It is not a quick fix except with Haldol temporarily. I am talking about Schitzophrenia and Bipolar patients. The ER sees many psych patinets but minor ones. We had an aggressive schitzo patient that scared everyone. I think your state needs to make sure ER nurses are well qualified to deal with aggressive sitiuations and therapeutic communication.
We wait anywhere from 8 to 24hrs to get psych pt's placed. We are a community hospital with no psych, no 24hr social workers, no oncall psych MD, and no secure room and 1 security guard per shift. Alot of ours are drug and alcohol problems too and only certain facilities deal with that.
The largest psych hospital with the most beds and most outpt programs and one of the few that did drug & alcohol just closed it's doors. It will be very interesting to see where these people will go now and the safety issues of keeping them in small ERS ill-equiped for psych. I'm not looking forward to it.
Old RN
11 Posts
I work in a general hospital in the psychiatry service. Administration is thinking of closing all/some of our psych beds because they are not as profitable as others may be. Can anyone speak to experiences in the ED resulting from having psych pts. come through with nowhere to send them to or having to wait for a bed to open up in another hospital? I need hands on, real-RN experience and thanks for that!