As patients with acute mental illness increasingly end up in EDs, several states are running trials of mental health workers joining police call-outs to avert presentations and reduce access block.

For two years, advanced practice nurse Ash Page has worked from a police station in northern Adelaide, paired with an officer, to monitor for call-outs where she could provide emergency mental health care.

It often felt safer than hospital work, she told AusDoc.

“In a hospital, you still have unwell people, but you have security guards, and they don’t have the same level of skill as police.”