Thank you for the question.
Yes, in many instances where we probably would have cases of overdoses, we knew that they would have been preventable, but we didn't have the connectivity or even the staff to run the programs to connect them virtually with a mental health professional, even if it was a psychiatrist or, if we remove all credentials, if we wanted to provide land-based healing or traditional healing. I've seen many overdoses.
It's very frustrating because we know that these would have been preventable. As nurses, we don't have the time to even sit down with our patients and have a conversation. That would often happen when they are on their hospital bed and the action has already happened. Then we would try to be briefly with them.
It happened that over the weekends I had instances where I couldn't connect with a social worker or a professional, and I was told by a doctor who was sitting in his apartment in Toronto, “We won't be dealing with a mental health crisis on a Friday night. This has to wait until Monday morning.” That was unacceptable.
I tried to advocate for the patient, but I had to send her back to her home. She was at a high risk of committing suicide, and that's very heartbreaking. We worked very hard over the weekend to make sure that she was safe and that as nurses we were too, but that's what we were told. The doctor is often the one who will decide who will be sent down south, if they can justify it. That's one example.