Practical EMS
My mission is to use the stories we all have in emergency medicine to encourage and uplift you where you are. EMT, Paramedic, nurse, PA, NP or physician. Emergency medicine is a very difficult specialty with unique challenges, and it calls us all to be better than the average person in order to stay healthy for our patients, our families and own mental wellness. I want to connect with EMS crews, fire crews, ER RN's, ER techs and new ER advanced practice providers to better understand their current struggles. I also want to bridge the gap between prehospital medicine and the emergency department and to encourage those seeking to become an advanced practice provider. Disclaimer: All Practical EMS content is opinion only. It is unaffiliated with any company or organization and does not represent any company or organization that Aaron currently works for or has worked for in the past. No content should be taken as medical advice.
Practical EMS
113 | Dr. David Berry | The ER doctor who overcame opiate addiction | How to care for the addicted and psychiatric patient with empathy
I’d like to welcome to the show Dr. David M. Berry, MD, he is a growing voice in the recovery and addiction space, an area that we deal with a ton across EMS and the emergency departments. He is an Emergency Medicine physician with over two decades of experience.
You can reach him at dberrymd@hotmail.com
We must remember, when working up these patients with addiction, they can have poor health baseline anyway, so they are at higher risk for something emergent to be going on
Dr. Berry talks about this approach to opiate OD
We have a small window between the ED and definitive care to help addicted patients move forward with treatment – a warm handoff to a treatment center or primary care that can monitor recovery is key
We have specific rules for most emergencies but often psychiatry is not on a set system
Holds may not always accomplish what we hope they will, it will not force someone to change
But there is certainly a role for the patient who is genuinely suicidal
We talk about good structure of evaluation and treatment of the psychiatric emergencies
David talks about some patients he has been able to help with addiction recovery from his experience
Don’t underestimate the difference we can and do make with patients just because we don’t always see the result
Dr. Berry talks about the message he has for clinicians:
We deal with a lot of emergencies, people actively dying, so when we hear a psych complaint or substance abuse complaint, we tend to mentally shuffle them into a lower priority. We need to remember to have empathy and take their complaints seriously, slow down with these patients
We talk about the balance between empathy and detachment and burnout
David talks about some methods of humanizing the experience for your patients and getting them to open up more
We talk about anchor bias and how to protect from it
David talks about conformation bias and how it relates in piloting an aircraft and emergency medicine
A key question to ask before you leave a patient room is “Do you have any questions?” – This can be hard to ask because we often want to move on but it’s so important to the patient
Full show notes can be found here: Episodes - Practical EMS - Content for EMTs, PAs, Paramedics
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Everything you hear today from myself and my guests is opinion only and doesn’t represent any organizations or companies that any of us are affiliated with. The stories you hear have been modified to protect patient privacy and any resemblance to real individuals is coincidental. This is for educational and entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice nor used to diagnose any medical or healthcare conditions.