# Ever Transported a Peds Psych?



## EMT2B (Jul 19, 2013)

Has anyone here ever transported a Peds (12 and under) Psych patient?  Is it more difficult than transporting an adolescent/adult/geriatric psych patient?  I think that's going to be the biggest hurdle for me, as there are two psych facilities in my general area that have a Peds ward (Children 3-12 y/o).


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## NomadicMedic (Jul 19, 2013)

I did. 10-year-old in four point restraints. Killed the family dog and tried to hurt his brother. It was disturbing. The entire trip he alternated between screaming at me and crying uncontrollably.


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## Anjel (Jul 19, 2013)

I do all the time. We have 3 psych facilities that take kids under 12. It's usually pretty easy. We have one that drives me nuts that gets transported 1-2 times a month. She is 8 I think and violent.


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## abckidsmom (Jul 19, 2013)

Yep.


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## Anjel (Jul 19, 2013)

Funny as soon as I replied to this I was dispatched to take an 8 year old to the long term psych facility we have, for anger issues.


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## jefftherealmccoy (Jul 19, 2013)

Done it.  And the kid was actually pretty good.  I was very stern with him and told him that he wasn't going to pull anything in my ambulance.  All the kid needed was someone to put him in his place and remind him he's a kid.  Mom obviously never did it.


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## MMiz (Jul 19, 2013)

Absolutely.  Many of the psych patients we transported were pediatric patients. 

It wasn't much different from any other patient, though peds more often tested their boundaries.

Act professional and you should be good to go.


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## Jim37F (Jul 19, 2013)

Once, from the psych facility to the ER following a fight. Non emergent, it was like a 12 yo boy, he was actually pretty nice to us. Didn't believe he needed to go to the ER, and quite frankly, he was right, because we get there and the ER doc comes up to us, spends 30 sec examining this kids face and nose, declares him alright and clears us back to the psych facility. Thing was is that this was just a drop off so we had to call dispatch to get the return trip set up and paged to us. Took longer than the actual exam lol


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## DesertMedic66 (Jul 20, 2013)

Many many times. Youngest for me was a 4 year old male who has a mental disability. He got mad at his older brother, went into the kitchen grabbed a knife and tried to stab him. 

The patient was small enough to fit on our Pedi-Mate (car seat for the gurney). No restraints were used because they would not fit on the patient.


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## EMT2B (Jul 20, 2013)

Wow ... Didn't expect so many 'yes' answers.  :blink:


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## Hunter (Jul 20, 2013)

I used to all the time when I worked IFT. My company has a contract with the only sort term/stabilizing psych place in the southern part of a city of 3 million. We would transport teens and peds all the time, most were calm ad long as you were stern but nice. Only transported one that I had to restrain, we had pd ride along for that one, since they bakeracted him.


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## Wayfaring Man (Jul 21, 2013)

I have transported one, and my other gig is as a mental health technician at psychiatric facilities, though I haven't worked with peds in that age range for a few years.  From the EMS perspective it's pretty much business as usual.  Calm attitude and compassionate care goes a long way, as well as not treating the patient as a patient, but as a person.


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## CodeBru1984 (Jul 21, 2013)

Yes and it was a pretty easy call too.


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## dmfinn (Jul 27, 2013)

I did an 8 y/0. Major psych issues, though I never found out what as the parents were completely in denial and wouldn't admit she had issues. Basically we arrive I'm scene and we see a little girl banging on the second story window, her screams overpowering the sirens. As we step out she throws the glass pane of her window onto the deck and shatters it. PD immediately runs upstairs, I follow once she leaves the window. When I get upstairs our K9 officer is hiding behind a chair as she throws shoes, books, toys, anything. Screaming the whole time. Finally he tells her that "he's done fooling around" and gets up to get her. She dodges right by him and runs back down stairs. Luckily my partner is ready to grab her, only she knees him right in the balls as she flys down the stairs. 

Long story short, we finally got her, 5 point harnessed her into to gurney and when that didn't work, tied her legs up with the blanket.


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## johnrsemt (Jul 27, 2013)

transported a bunch of them;  one, a 7 year old male when we walked into the facility was fighting with counselor and mother,  including hitting his mom with a metal trash can (whomever put a metal trash can in a counselors officer deserves to get hit with it).  

   I took the can away from him;  told him in a loud voice to sit down and behave.   He did.   Counselor said that I shouldn't have yelled at him.

  When we put him on the cot, and secured him; he told me he was going to jump out of the truck at the first chance.     and kept unhooking the belts.

   I stopped him, and reconnected them;   but when we got on the freeway and was in front of a semi, I offered to unhook them and told him to go ahead and jump.   He refused,  tightening the straps tighter.


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## patzyboi (Jul 27, 2013)

Is a Psych patient the same as one on a 5150 hold?


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## DesertMedic66 (Jul 27, 2013)

patzyboi said:


> Is a Psych patient the same as one on a 5150 hold?



Pretty much. Different areas call it different things. A 5150 hold for CA is a 72 hour hold for mental evaluation.


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## Jambi (Jul 27, 2013)

I've transported a few...

The lamest/saddest one was a 17 year old kid with mental retardation.  He had had a "tantrum" (PD's words), so his grandmother called PD.  PD tried their typical aggressive must-control-everything approach, and the kid responded poorly and aggressively (not his fault, that's how he reacts to that sort of stimuli)...and they put him on a 5150 hold.

The meanest Psych was a 14 year old girl that weighed a whopping 110lbs. We wrestled with her for 15 minutes to get her restrained, only to pop her hands out of our restraints.  She liked to kick and bite.

My most memorable Psych was a 21 year old women with epilepsy that use a walker.  The story starts with my partner and I getting dispatched to a PD arrest scene for someone that was pepper sprayed.  The story, it turns out, was that this women was angry with her boyfriend, so she dragged herself, 3 year old son, her walker, and a hammer down to where his car was parked and booted behind the apartment complex she lived in.  She then proceeded to beat on the car with the hammer.  Police show up, tell her to drop the hammer, and the 3 year old pulls away from mom to split. Mom swings around to grab kid, and the police think she swinging at the kid. The pepper spray her into oblivion.  

I show up to find a 21 year old, 100lbs women sobbing and snotting onto the car, in handcuffs and bent over her walker ( which was in front of her) and the car.  Yes, PD pepper sprayed a person that needed a walker to get around.  She gets transported to local ED for eval.

Fast forward 6 hours and my partner and I getting our proverbial donkeys handed to us.  

Dispatched to ED for a psych transfer.  yay.

We walk in and it's the Pt from before, only no one bothered to tell her she was going to ETS (Psych facility). She's been there before, and doesn't want to go back.  the sight of the gurney loosed the dogs of war and it was on.  Imagine the exorcist scene. This patient is going for broke.  Cursing, screaming, flailing, biting, kicking, hitting...everything.  Her mother is equally as loud, only she's praying and laying over the top of Pt.  Pt's neighbor, a 400+lbs black woman, is in the corner singing Amazing Grace as loud as she can.

There are 6 of us trying to restrain here.  Everytime she tries to bit she makes this high pitched packman sound (like this at 1:04). I wasn't quite fast enough and she got my hand, but only enough to get my glove, which she tore off my hand then proceed to flail it around in her mouth like a dog with a chew toy while making growling sounds.  

Eventually doc came in, yelled, "F this," and juiced her up with some Ativan.  She slept nicely after that.

Turns out her family had lied to her about where she was going to go.  Never lie to a patient, especially a psych patient.


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## EMT2B (Jul 27, 2013)

Jambi said:


> Never lie to a patient, especially a psych patient.


Words to live by!!


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## Handsome Robb (Jul 27, 2013)

All the time.

Not much different although they can be a lot stronger than they look when they decide to get feisty.


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## aberrant (Jul 27, 2013)

Yup. My first call on the job after Basic. Very violent 10 year old in restraints.. it definitely caught me off guard. Since then I've had about 3 more ped psych call, routine now.


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## NPO (Jul 31, 2013)

Yes I have just one. 

I wonder how many of the 'yes' answers above are for real psych patients vs the more common 'having a bad week' psych patient. 

My 8-yeer old psych was a real psych. And I found it difficult, mentally, to restrain her as she fought me. Next time probay won't be so bad since that was my first time but it was definitely different than an adult psych for me.


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## EMT2B (Jul 31, 2013)

I've never had to use "mechanical restraints" (i.e. tied sheet, four-points, etc) on a child, but I have had more than my fair share of manually restraining children (i.e. holding them down with my hands) who are having temper tantrums or trying to hurt themselves/someone else.  Not an easy task, emotionally.  :sad:


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## jediwill (Aug 1, 2013)

My first was a 6 year old for anger issues...he was scared to death and shaking...I had him relaxed and laughing within a few minutes... just took my time with him explaining what was going on and just made some connections with him....no need to be a ***. Ive had suicide attempts from a 10 year old...made a noose n climbed a tree....poor kid was gonna make it stick....honestly 80% we behavioral not mental.


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## Integrityornothing (Sep 9, 2013)

Had one during my clinicals. 17 y/o who had ran out of his meds. He went a walk-in clinic for help, and they told him to pack sand. Started making threats and walked into traffic on a busy highway. He was fine once we got him in the back. I was closer in age to him than my preceptors, so he talked to me the whole way. Said he was a veteran. Call of duty counts on account of how realistic it is.


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## PotatoMedic (Sep 9, 2013)

I have had a few.  Most of them are calm and cooperative.  The ones that are not and invol oh boy do you need to make sure your restraints are on tight and secure.  I also recommend taping a pillow next to the wall they can reach with their head.


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## hogwiley (Sep 10, 2013)

I've done it a couple times. One seemed relatively normal aside from having a one sided conversation with her mom, who was following in a car behind us. The other one was in restraints and did a pretty good impression of the girl from the exorcist the whole way. Both had attempted suicide.


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## TheLocalMedic (Sep 13, 2013)

I've had two.  One was an 8 year old male with schizophrenia, sad...  The other was a 12 year old girl who had tried to kill herself (not the first time either).  Both were depressing, but the patients were well behaved and didn't pose any hazard.  The 8 year old was a little interesting because he kept asking for wipes to "get the blood off" of his hands, but in general he was pretty calm.  I just felt really bad for them.


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## TechYourself (Sep 13, 2013)

We transport peds psych patients all the time from our ED to our off site psych facility.

Some kids need it.  And sometimes I just get the feeling that the parents are checking them in to get a break for the weekend...


I think the youngest I've brought over was 6.


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## gonefishing (Sep 19, 2013)

Done plenty.  Most of them being pyros.lol


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## jpregulman (Oct 2, 2013)

I have as well. 2 in the same day. Both under 12 attempted suicide. They got buckle locks but not 4-points. They were really quite and refused to talk to me. These were both as a student-EMT. It was definitely a different type of call...


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## Miscusi (Oct 2, 2013)

EMT2B said:


> Has anyone here ever transported a Peds (12 and under) Psych patient?  Is it more difficult than transporting an adolescent/adult/geriatric psych patient?  I think that's going to be the biggest hurdle for me, as there are two psych facilities in my general area that have a Peds ward (Children 3-12 y/o).



Yes i have, i found it easier because kids are small , easy to handle.


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## unleashedfury (Oct 2, 2013)

taken a 9 yr old boy. who was deeply troubled 

Original story since mom and dad drove him into the ED. they were his foster parents. 2nd set of foster parents. He was originally in a foster home where he was sexually abused for "punishment" 

Since he has become sexually aggressive and has been caught performing oral sex on foster brothers and sisters. and was told by former foster parents that sexual abuse is the retaliation for doing something wrong. To the point where if he does something wrong or breaks something he had said to his foster mom "are you gonna have sex with me now?" 

the foster mother was telling me that he has 2 siblings a brother and sister who all were in the same home. Apparently the other 2 have improved their behavior due to heavy therapy he has not.


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