Nurse Police Team to help address crisis cases on location in Windsor
The Nurse Police Team (NPT) pilot program will be extended for at least another six months in Windsor.
The program is a pairing of police officers and nurses out on patrol. So far, the teams have gone to nearly 400 calls, helping to treat people in need, especially cases dealing with substance abuse, addiction, and mental health crises.
By addressing persons in distress on location, both police and nurses can administer support and care on location with immediacy.
In some cases, the person can be helped, treated, and then referred to additional resources without the need to go to an area hospital emergency room.
In turn, stress on hospital resources is relieved to an extent.
Kuljeet Kalsi is the operations manager for the emergency department of the Ouellette campus at Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH).
"The specialty and the uniqueness of this program is that it's coupled up,” said Kalsi. “The police are coupled up with our nurses from the emergency department and mental health. So, they have that added benefit to provide those specialty expertise that they have available with them."
From left to right, nurse practitioners Sean Clavette, Abbas Haidar and Yemmi Calito in Windsor, Ont., on Thursday, May 4, 2023. (Sanjay Maru/CTV News Windsor)
The program launched in May 2023 with an aim to deliver proactive treatment and care on site.
Over the first 14 weeks of the pilot venture, 147 patients were cared for without the need to be admitted to hospital.
The hope is that the program will expand and continue to deliver frontline community care, saving hospital beds and medical resources for the most vulnerable and critical emergency cases.
“This partnership highlights the need to think differently about the higher risk populations we serve,” said, David Musyj, WRH president and CEO. “As a system, we need to modify our hours of operation and look to meeting with these populations where they are, instead of requiring them to attend a fixed address.”
The NPT program runs on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between 1p.m. and 1 a.m.
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