Presentation Title
Development of a Psychiatric Risk Score (PRiS) Tool for Psychiatric Patients in Medical Emergency Departments
Abstract
Due to the steady increase in the number of psychiatric patients coming into Vermont Emergency Departments (ED), issues relating to triaging of patients, bed space, and overall care have arisen. UVM Medical Center (UVMMC) has responded by hiring more staff with specific psychiatric training and by beginning to formulate a plan for ED rooms designed for psychiatric care. Both are long term solutions to this problem but take a substantial amount of time to reach a level that will truly meet the need the ED currently has. To ascertainwhich resources should be used in a particular psychiatric patient’s care a score based triage system has been shown to work best (Smart et. al 1999). For my thesis, I plan to develop a triage scoring system specifically designed for high risk patients to ensure they will receive the most appropriate psychiatric care the UVMMC ED can offer. This will be done by collecting data on past patient cases where chemical or physical restraint were used (2016-2017), developing a triage score based on patterns and trends from these data, and testing the scoring system on cases from 2018-2019. If effective, the scoring system will hopefully be implemented into the UVMMC ED and in so doing will help move our standard of care for psychiatric patients forward.
Primary Faculty Mentor Name
Eike Blohm, MD
Faculty/Staff Collaborators
Eike Blohm, MD
Status
Undergraduate
Student College
College of Arts and Sciences
Program/Major
Biology
Primary Research Category
Health Sciences
Development of a Psychiatric Risk Score (PRiS) Tool for Psychiatric Patients in Medical Emergency Departments
Due to the steady increase in the number of psychiatric patients coming into Vermont Emergency Departments (ED), issues relating to triaging of patients, bed space, and overall care have arisen. UVM Medical Center (UVMMC) has responded by hiring more staff with specific psychiatric training and by beginning to formulate a plan for ED rooms designed for psychiatric care. Both are long term solutions to this problem but take a substantial amount of time to reach a level that will truly meet the need the ED currently has. To ascertainwhich resources should be used in a particular psychiatric patient’s care a score based triage system has been shown to work best (Smart et. al 1999). For my thesis, I plan to develop a triage scoring system specifically designed for high risk patients to ensure they will receive the most appropriate psychiatric care the UVMMC ED can offer. This will be done by collecting data on past patient cases where chemical or physical restraint were used (2016-2017), developing a triage score based on patterns and trends from these data, and testing the scoring system on cases from 2018-2019. If effective, the scoring system will hopefully be implemented into the UVMMC ED and in so doing will help move our standard of care for psychiatric patients forward.