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Triage of Psychiatric Patients in the Emergency Department

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Behavioral Emergencies for Healthcare Providers

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Abstract

Patients arrive in emergency departments (EDs) with concerns needing rapid assessment and effective clinical management. Providers in the ED have an obligation to rule out any apparent life-threatening presenting conditions. Ensuring efficiency and safety is easy when patients come to the ED one at a time. However, patients arrive in the ED at different rates and with different acuities of illness. Facilitating efficiency and safety, triage is the process by which multiple patients are rapidly assessed for risk and queued for care by the ED providers. Patients assessed to be at the highest risk for deterioration or in need of immediate intervention are seen first, while patients with less urgent concerns may be asked to wait.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Margaret Judd, LCSW, for her contributions and Kathy Adamson, RN, for her comments during the preparation of the first edition of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Divy Ravindranath

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA, USA

    Mark Newman

Authors
  1. Divy Ravindranath
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  2. Mark Newman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Divy Ravindranath .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency Medicine, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science/ The Chicago Medical School, North Chicago, IL, USA

    Leslie S. Zun

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Anschutz, Aurora, CO, USA

    Kimberly Nordstrom

  3. Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA

    Michael P. Wilson

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Ravindranath, D., Newman, M. (2021). Triage of Psychiatric Patients in the Emergency Department. In: Zun, L.S., Nordstrom, K., Wilson, M.P. (eds) Behavioral Emergencies for Healthcare Providers. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52520-0_42

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52520-0_42

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-52519-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-52520-0

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