Paramedics can safely evaluate psychiatric patients' medical condition in the field

(University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences) Patients with psychiatric emergencies on involuntary holds are often taken to traditional hospital emergency departments, where they can spend hours to days in an emergency department bed waiting for access to specialized psychiatric personnel. New research finds that paramedics can use a screening process to determine whether to medically clear patients experiencing psychiatric emergencies before transporting them directly to a stand-alone psychiatric emergency service facility, thus getting them to the treatment they need sooner.

from EurekAlert! - Social and Behavioral Science http://bit.ly/2Ske8E8