Apologies for the grabby title but this is something that is causing me a vast amount of confusion at present. I'm a paramedic here in the UK and I really just wanted to hear the perspective of some of the people I've had the pleasure of meeting on CWE.
In my role I frequently encounter patients who have/are experiencing some form of seizure, most of the time we are called because the patient's immediate action medication (e.g. buccal midazolam) has failed to relieve the symptoms, the fit has gone on longer than ordinary, or the patient is in a strange environment without their partner/mother/kids etc to advise people what to do.
On top of this, I also encounter people with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures and pseudofitters, and this is about the point that I get confused. I completely understand that there are a lot of people who experience seizures in times of emotional stress, even losing consciousness in the process and I completely understand that they are not in any way feigning illness; I get confused here because in my "introduction to neurology: epilepsy" module at uni, they introduced us to the idea of pseudofits as "Those evil nasty fakers who're after us diazemuls".
Thankfully in the years since then this attitude has changed significantly, however.... we still do encounter people on a monthly basis who do fake seizures.... now these people are very few and very far between, and the process of empirically identifying them as faking their seizures is a difficult one, often done by the emergency doc in ED by power of suggestion or by getting the pt to admit to it. At present the terms "pseudoseizure", "pseudofitter", and "Pseudoepileptic" are still synonymous with "faker", and while I'm trying to change attitudes one at a time it's difficult.
I was really just posting this in order to gather some opinions, how do the good members of CWE see these terms, please do be honest as while i've scanned a number of websites a lot of them use some confusing allegorical terminology for people who may be faking, or may have non-epileptic seizures... Any clarification will be appreciated, and please feel free to speak openly!
Thank you all again
om svasti kamaala kshivi pula sambhava dharmadhatu gitsara svaha
In my role I frequently encounter patients who have/are experiencing some form of seizure, most of the time we are called because the patient's immediate action medication (e.g. buccal midazolam) has failed to relieve the symptoms, the fit has gone on longer than ordinary, or the patient is in a strange environment without their partner/mother/kids etc to advise people what to do.
On top of this, I also encounter people with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures and pseudofitters, and this is about the point that I get confused. I completely understand that there are a lot of people who experience seizures in times of emotional stress, even losing consciousness in the process and I completely understand that they are not in any way feigning illness; I get confused here because in my "introduction to neurology: epilepsy" module at uni, they introduced us to the idea of pseudofits as "Those evil nasty fakers who're after us diazemuls".
Thankfully in the years since then this attitude has changed significantly, however.... we still do encounter people on a monthly basis who do fake seizures.... now these people are very few and very far between, and the process of empirically identifying them as faking their seizures is a difficult one, often done by the emergency doc in ED by power of suggestion or by getting the pt to admit to it. At present the terms "pseudoseizure", "pseudofitter", and "Pseudoepileptic" are still synonymous with "faker", and while I'm trying to change attitudes one at a time it's difficult.
I was really just posting this in order to gather some opinions, how do the good members of CWE see these terms, please do be honest as while i've scanned a number of websites a lot of them use some confusing allegorical terminology for people who may be faking, or may have non-epileptic seizures... Any clarification will be appreciated, and please feel free to speak openly!
Thank you all again
om svasti kamaala kshivi pula sambhava dharmadhatu gitsara svaha