Psychosomatics
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The implementation of emergency codes has become standard practice in hospitals to provide system-wide preparedness for the early detection and prevention of crises. Psychiatric emergencies in medical/surgical locations, however, are not typically regarded as distinct entities from general security threats. The "security-first" paradigm is a nonclinical intervention that focuses on behavioral containment rather than on the treatment of underlying psychopathology. ⋯ Behavioral emergency response teams re-establish patient care within the intervention without omitting security containment. They help rapidly address acute comorbid psychiatric needs without demanding additional psychiatric resources by functioning as trained surrogates of consult-liaison psychiatry as they provide direct clinical oversight into primary teams who would otherwise be unsupported in navigating clinical scenarios extending beyond their typical range of expertise. An analysis using the "Swiss cheese" model of human error trapping offers a comprehensive illustration of how behavioral emergency response teams add multilayered perceptual and mechanistic advantages to barriers commonly encountered when psychiatric emergencies arise in nonpsychiatric settings.