After grabbing a set of vital signs on the pleasant but confused nursing home patient who had just arrived in the ED, I found her chart to document. Glancing at the inter-facility transfer form, I discovered the reason she had been taken from her room, put in an ambulance, and driven across the city in the middle of the night.
The patient, according to the form, was an "elopement risk."
In the ED we work up altered mental status. We work up UTIs. We work up chest pain and shortness of breath.
How exactly did they want us to work up "elopement risk?" Watch her for an hour and make sure she didn't run away?
1 comment:
Better would be if she were in a wheelchair...
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