Psychiatric Medical Screening
In this episode, we will discuss how to perform medical screening for patients with psychiatric complaints. While most of these workups are routine, we have to be able to catch the small percentage of patients who have a medical cause to their psychiatric complaint. Don’t think it can’t happen to you- it almost happened to me twice during residency! We’ll discuss how to stay safe while evaluating psychiatric patients, how to get the entire history, how to do appropriate testing, catch the red flags, and make the appropriate disposition.
In the bonus section, a community ED doctor wrote me to tell me his thoughts on testicular pain and why we may not need an ultrasound on every patient. As you’ll hear, the answer is far from settled and not without controversy.
During the podcast, I mention the ERcast episode on Suicide Risk Assessment. If you are stuck having to discharge low-risk suicidal ideation patients from your ED, Rob Orman gives you an excellent primer on how to do it safely and effectively
ERcast suicide risk assessment page
Psychiatric Medical Screening Podcast
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