Customer Reviews

Emergency Department Treatment of the Psychiatric Patient: Policy Issues and Legal Requirements (American Psychology-Law Society)

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this book is an excellant resource for my ethics paper on the moral distress ER nurses experience when psych patients present to the ED for pyschiatric issues. I believe this to be a huge concern of how we take care of these patients due to dwindling resources/hospitals for this patient population. This population is growing for every ED but they can be very time consuming and are often our repeat customers. It's difficult to practice compassion when you are working in a very busy ER, waiting room full of sick patients and in comes (any repeat pt's name)again.

I needed a thorough description and discussion of the issues around discrimination against persons with mental illness in Emergency Rooms as well as suggested remedies.

This text provided both.

As an advocate for system change, reading this text is a must.
In fact I have not been able to find any other worthy readings on this topic.

This book should be required reading for all ER physicians and public policy makers and administrators looking for ways to improve health care systems.

This is an excellent read for anyone concerned about the state of Psychiatric Patients in the Emergency Department. Don't expect your administrators to be happy you are reading this!

I work in Healthcare Security at a large trauma center and I have extensive contact with active and retired police with my job. I also have police academy training, extensive law enforcement training, and a B.S. degree in Criminal Justice from Temple University. This is a VERY important topic, and no one wants to be the entity to deal with mentally ill people. Everyone wants to put the problem on another entity. The book was well written, well organized, and has a ton of useful and current (2006) legal information that I was looking for. The one problem with the book is the clearly slanted liberal views of the author. She is from Connecticut, and while I hate to be stereotypical, in my twenty years being in the criminal justice/security field, certain states are known for being especially slanted in their law enforcement views and/or liberal, such as Texas, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Connecticut is a state known for many people with extremely liberal views. Security and Police are seen as a necessary evil, and generally not supported by the people in the state. The book leans extensively towards limiting involvement with security and police and everything being handled "intellectually." This is a serious flaw in the book, since while 95% of the time things can be managed verbally by healthcare personnel, to not accept and support the 5% of the time security and police are needed to manage issues in a "hands-on" way is not at all realistic or correct. If readers can take the liberal interpretation/presentation of some of the information with a "grain of salt", then the book is excellent and highly recommended.