MEDEST - January 10, 2022 - By Mario Rugna
- Prehospital professionals dealing with acute agitated patients are always challenging all their clinical and non clinical skills at maximum levels. You need to deal with the patient, the bystanders and the law enforcement people trying to manage in the best way possible a social and clinical emergency.
- Understanding if the patient is acutely intoxicated, psychiatrically decompensated (or both) is the first quick challenge we face. Clinical history, physical examination are not always possible so mostly of the times we have to guess based on our gestalt, clinical and non clinical experience.
- What kind of patient I expect to find? Basically there is thesociopath agitated but collaborative, the agitated non collaborative but not dangerous (for himself and the others) the agitated non collaborative and highly dangerous. This is not a schematic and alway applicable definition but can help to understand how to gradually approach those kind of emergencies
