Does the gender of emergency physicians have an impact on the prehospital care of psychiatric emergencies? a retrospective cohort analysis

Does the gender of emergency physicians have an impact on the prehospital care of psychiatric emergencies? a retrospective cohort analysis

Psychiatric emergencies pose a special challenge for emergency physicians. It is known from other areas of medicine that the influence of a doctor’s gender can have an impact on the type of treatment and quality of patient care. However, this has not yet been investigated in the context of prehospital care in psychiatric emergencies.

2882 emergency missions with a psychiatric indication/prehospital psychiatric diagnosis were studied and divided into: intoxication (n = 1343, 46.6%), suicidal behavior (n = 488, 16.9%), exceptional mental situation (n = 282, 9.8%), agitation (n = 262, 9.1%), anxiety and panic disorders (n = 262, 9.1%) and “psychiatric miscellaneous” (n = 245, 8.5%). Inpatient hospitalization occurred in 67.9% (n = 1958) of emergency missions. Of these, 20.3% (n = 392) were admitted directly to a psychiatric hospital. Male emergency physicians had a slightly longer "on-scene" time for psychiatric emergencies than female emergency physicians (p = 0.024). However, the variance in "on-scene" time for all interventions was significantly greater for female emergency physicians than for male emergency physicians (p = 0.025). Male emergency physicians were significantly more likely than their female counterparts to administer intravenous hypnotics in prehospital psychiatric emergencies (p = 0.001). For psychiatric patients who refused medically indicated inpatient psychiatric admission (“involuntary psychiatric admission”), male and female emergency physicians were equally likely to take the required action (p = 0.522). However, male emergency physicians were significantly more likely to administer an intravenous hypnotic to enforce involuntary admission (p = 0.009).

Benedikt Schick, Benjamin Mayer, Bettina Jungwirth, Eberhard Barth, Claus-Martin Muth, Christine Eimer, Celine Schwarzer & Carlos Schönfeldt-Lecuona

https://bmcemergmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12873-024-01118-3

BMC Emergency Medicine

24 oktober 2024

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