– Submitted by the Willow Tertiary Mental Health team
Our hospital wards opened in 2012 in response to the closing of Riverview Hospital. We now provide inpatient treatment for 100 patients spread over five secure wards. Our beds are in the Willow Pavilion (WP2,3,4,5) and Segal Building (Segal 4). We specialize in providing mental health treatment for patients with refractory psychiatric diagnoses often with comorbid substance use and complex medical issues. Our older adult ward on WP5 focuses on adults over 65 who are often frail with dementia.
Our patients’ length of stay varies from between several months to several years depending on their response to treatment and the availability of appropriate community housing. The bonus for us is that we can get to know our patients in a very detailed way and offer tailored treatment and rehab from our multidisciplinary team.
Our attending psychiatrists are the MRPs who work alongside dedicated clinical pharmacists. Medical coverage is provided by an in-house team of family physicians during the weekdays. There is also an on-call group off family physicians available overnight and on weekends.
Nursing care is mostly provided by RPNs (registered psychiatric nurses) who are great even in the most challenging behavioural situations but have limited medical training. As such, we have a lower threshold for transferring patients in acute medical/surgical situations. We are, however, able hold the patient’s bed until they are stable enough to return to our wards.
We have access to the entire spectrum of services of the hospital through Cerner. We are grateful to our specialist colleagues in medicine, surgery, radiology, dentistry and podiatry for being there for our patients when called on.
For those colleagues who are interested in learning more about our service, we would like to invite you to our upcoming meet-and-greet lunch:
Wednesday, June 18
Segal Building Board Room
12 noon to 1 pm
Please drop in to enjoy some food, meet a few of our team members and have your questions answered.
RSVP here.