The Dynamics of Nurse-Police Teams: A Strengths-Based Focused Ethnographic Exploration​ ​

Abstract

Canadian hospitals and police services are operating beyond capacity to meet the needs of equity deserving populations, including individuals experiencing homelessness, substance use disorder and mental health issues. One novel approach to co-response models of community crisis response, is the Nurse Police Team (NPT). The NPT introduces a unique partnership between police constables and registered nurses who provide outreach services and crisis response. The NPT aims to reduce unnecessary hospital admissions, strengthen community support, and improve community health outcomes. By employing focused ethnography, this project aims to explore the shared experiences of NPT members from a strengths-based approach. Semi-structured interviews (seven police offices and seven registered nurses) took place over the Microsoft Teams® platform with two members of the research team, consisting of registered nurses, a police constable and a social worker. Aided by Intellectus Statistics TM software, the interview transcripts were analyzed by members of the research team to identify themes that will help inform the findings of the study. Five main themes were identified including: 1) work in progress, 2) enhanced community trust with compassion over authority, 3) building community and addressing barriers, 4) safety first, and 5) room to expand the team’s role and improve effectiveness. Our findings demonstrate that trust building and integrated outreach is a cornerstone to address systemic inequities for equity deserving populations. Moving forward, further research should evaluate the impact of NPTs from the viewpoint of the unhoused and evaluate utilization of community-based systems to better understand program outcomes.