Involuntary Commitment

[will robinson]

Would be interested in knowing how your acute care institution handles involuntary commitments that require inpatient medical care before they can go to a psych ward. Do you provide sitters or does hospital or company police stay with the patient. Any policies would be welcome. My hospital is in the process of reworking our policies on how to handle these situations and I realize that individual state laws may come into play. I live in Eastern North Carolina. We would like to be consistent with the rest of the region in which we are located. Thank you in advance for any information you may be able to share. If I should post this question in a different area of the forums will gladly take advice.

Regards,

Will Robinson

[Whispera, MSN, RN]

I'm in Indiana, so I don't know what your state does, but we require a 24/7 sitter.

[Ivanna_Nurse, BSN, RN]

they stay in icu, with a sitter, security, or police, whichever is needed.

[Aneroo, LPN]

Are you at PCMH?

I remember our hospital police sitting with IVC's once they had paperwork. Until then, the people on psych precautions (anyone with a psych complaint) were being watched- we had a NA1 who would sit outside their room and do the checks. Only time we really had a problem with that was if there was a lot of psych patients and then you had that NA stretched too thin. If we were short on NA's, it didn't matter. If there were no NA's, the NA would help do vitals in triage.