Cape Cod police officers claimed patients who are taken to local hospitals after serious threats of self harm are released too soon, often before the police get back to the station.
To improve communication between police officers and ER physicians, Cape Cod Healthcare officials met with representatives of Cape police departments and NAMI, an advocacy group for people with mental illness, to hold police training sessions.
Daria Hanson, MD, chief of Cape Cod Healthcare’s centers for behavioral health, created a form police officers can use to describe what they found on the scene of mental health emergency calls, which can include guns in the home and the patient’s state of mind before they receive a dose of Ativan at the hospital.
Dr. Hanson also advised police to call the charge nurse or nurse practitioner on the psychiatric team at Cape Cod Community Hospital’s emergency department to tell the medical staff whether the patient was being voluntarily transported or by means of a Section 12 emergency order.
The healthcare network is continuing to hold training sessions this week with police officers from 13 departments in the Cape Cod area.
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