In an epileptic crisis it is always of vital importance to take into account certain characteristics such as the presentation at onset, the duration of the epileptic episode, frequency and number of episodes, assessment of the consciousness level, and patient response to the medication. These are all important aspects to be considered, as a detailed description of the crisis, given in a chronological order, greatly help to locate the epileptogene focus and the type of crisis.

This paper, agreed upon by the multidisciplinary team of the Service of Neurology of our hospital, establishes the performance guidelines to be followed by the nursing personnel in an epileptic episode, and helps in their identification and differentiation.