The Handover: Crisis Patients

Well, its July, and its my turn to host The Handover.I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last couple of weeks after I was given this task, and I feel like I’ve come up with a good topic.

Throughout my schooling to become an EMT and a Paramedic, I received a lot of education and information about treating strokes, and traumas, and MI’s.I’ve learned how to read 12 leads, and I’ve tubed and cannulated my fair share of patients.There have been times though in my career where I might go a rotation without dealing with a critical patient.There is one patient that always has seemed to be present in my EMS Career as a Paramedic, and coincidentally, it’s a class of patient that was not touched upon as much by my Paramedic and EMT instructors: The Crisis Patient.

These patients come in all shapes and sizes.Some are as young as 5 or 6, and some as old as 70 or 80.They all present differently.Some are suicidal, some homicidal, and some depressed.Some of them are very cooperative, many show passive resistance, and others, unfortunately, insist on being difficult.

Recently in my system, because of a few incidents, techniques for dealing with these patients has been a hot button topic.Some crews are reluctant to go into scenes without the Police Department or a Supervisor present.Instead of blindly pushing people through the door of a residence, I’d like a chance to take from you, my esteemed, intelligent colleagues, some of the techniques that you use to deal with these crisis patients.So I was wondering:

– How do you approach these patients?How conscious are you of your body language around these people

– When a patient is resistant or reluctant to receive treatment and transport, how do you like to handle that?

– In your time with these patients, how much do you dig into their history, and reasons for feeling depressed, suicidal or just “not right?”

– Finally, when it comes down to it, what techniques do you use for subduing and restraining a patient?

So how do you contribute? Just post a link to your blog as a comment to this post, and I will compile them, and at the end of the month, I’ll post a summary of everyone’s work.

I’m looking forward to all of your answers, and I hope to be able to share them with some of the folks that I work with to help make them better providers!

Do you need my Email Address? Here you go. . . [email protected]