Paramedic management of patients with mental health issues: a scoping review.

Abstract

Background: Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of the Right Care, Right Person agreement, paramedics spend about 1.8m hours per year managing people with mental health issues. The UK health service needs to address the urgent training requirements for paramedics to provide mental healthcare and reduce this deficit in emergency care provision. Aims: To identify and examine current research on paramedics manage people with mental health issues. Methods: The five stages of Arkeys & O’Malley’s framework were implemented. A research question was developed, databases searched, studies identified, data charted, summarised and reported. Findings: 15 of 2303 results were included, with five themes identified: Perceptions and expectations, call triage and interservice collaboration, communication skills, lack of education and training, and evidence-based interventions. Conclusions: there is global evidence of the deficiencies in paramedic education around mental health presentations and a need for evidence-based education and interventions to improve patient outcomes.