hey guys YouTube what is going on it's Evan again your paramedic coach and today what we're going to talk about is something powerful all right today we're going to talk about is altered mental status patience okay I want to talk to you guys today about some different things you may see and I have a cool mnemonic that I want to share with you guys today first the first time Monica I'm gonna share with you is this the whole entire paramedic coach system it revolves around learning different mnemonics and also as well learning different pathways to treat patients all right so giving an example when I first became a paramedic I would have different systems in place so if whatever the patient's complaint was I knew what I had to look for I wasn't nervous about it okay there's enough going on when you're a brand new paramedic and I want to offer you some cool tips today so we're gonna go over today evans mnemonic for altered mental status so check this out guys so first is split up into two different mnemonics but if you want to bring them together by all means you may do that so first mnemonic is evans 3 s's okay so we can tell yourself it's okay the patient's confused or altered there's 3 s's that I'm gonna look for I can ask okay each one starts with an S so okay they're confused okay what are the 3 s's let's see if this is 1 3 s's so here it is the first s you want to look at is stroke so do a stroke scale on your patient okay number one okay number two so next thing you want to look at is could it be sepsis okay what is set that's going to look like well obviously there's going to be there'd be some fever going on okay there's also going to be some tach cardia going on and finally if they're going south and the shock is going to be some sort of hypotension and right so sepsis is number two okay the next s you want to look at is sugar okay so what is the patient's blood sugar okay blood glucose level alright so get a blood sugar on the patient right so that is when you want to look at now after doing those 3 s's so let's just say I do my 3 s's I'm going forward I checked her stroke negative Stroke Scale I did a blood sugar it comes back at eighty clean good we do the next thing sepsis no signs of sepsis no recent infection where the two most common routes to infection it's gonna be pneumonia and also UTI are pretty common okay cellulitis okay cool get even think about that but we're talking about sepsis and things like that really we're looking at pneumonia and we're looking at UTI okay now next thing I want you to think about you can think about this as a bonus s what's the bonus s okay it's common is seizure okay seizure do those first three if it's not one of those three I want you think as a bonus could this be a seizure okay there is many different types of seizures out there okay but could it be a seizure they have a seizure history do they suffer from alcoholism okay some of those things okay check that out now if it's not if it's not one of those four SS okay is it your three is your bonus for seizure if it's not one of the four the next two monic is not an OT so n is going to stand for narcan okay so and what narcan means is this a simple opiate overdose but also here with the N I want you to think about could this be an overdose or some sort of you know tox you know toxic emergency okay is there medication at play here so idea narcan I think of overdose first thing but could it be something else could it be alcohol could it be another drug okay sonar camp oh it's for oxygen is this patient simply just hypoxic so if we're doing our vitals you're taking the pulse ox and the patient if it's below 94% well if I'm if I'm hanging out and I'm sitting here and I'm at 85% option I'm going to be confused so give me oxygen and watch I'm gonna be feeling a lot better and maybe not confused okay respiratory emergency I can keep you altered and then finally the T and this mnemonic is going to be trauma is there sneaky trauma okay give an example it's the winter time your patient has bundled up bundled up but you don't notice that they're bleeding under their three layers or shirts or it's you have to take their hat off they have a hat on and there's a huge hematoma here and their pupils are unequal ones you know hugely dilated and one is you know more constricted that could be a head injury okay maybe they're all turquoise they they fell in the ice or maybe they got hit with something and they don't know what's going on because they're confused sneaky trauma okay now after you go through all of those okay and the vital signs are clean good blood pressure good heart rate we already took the sugar good pulse ox you do your physical exam everything looks clean at that point we got to start thinking about okay maybe as a paramedic maybe there's something going on in the blood work here okay maybe there's something going on internally that we can't see this is why we're taking the patient to the hospital all right but you've covered your bases I'll give you an example if you brought a patient in suffering from a stroke and you went to the hospital no lights and sirens at the problem okay if you have a patient with a bunch of 40 and you missed it a problem the whole goal being a paramedic is to catch life through its early treat them if we can if we cannot we alert the hospital immediately hey I got a life threat here okay it's something that we can't manage meaning you know the surgery or they need you know some sort of procedure that we can't do in the field but it's coming and we're coming in quick we're setting me up with IVs we're setting me up with all the bases we'll see you in the critical room all right so that is altered Mental Status hope you guys enjoyed this lecture and guys if you're new to the channel be sure to subscribe again my name is Evan the paramedic coach and if you want to learn more if you love these videos to be a link down below we call it the paramedic coach system the paramedic coach course if you want to learn how I treat patients if you want to learn the skills that got me to be a you know expert a confident pair of men in my system click the link down below and you're gonna learn a lot and guys I'll see you next time