Speaker: Jessica, Mobile Crisis Clinician
Please take a moment to introduce yourself and tell us about your role at Northern Human Services.
Jessica: Hello, my name is Jessica. I am a mobile crisis clinician and I worked for Northern for 2.5 years now.
What is the best part about living, working and playing in the North Country of New Hampshire?
Jessica: I think the best part about living in the North Country is all of the access that we have to nature. To be honest, I love being outside. There's plenty of things for fishing, ATVs/four wheeling. The snowmobiles, hiking. I really enjoy finding a different trail every weekend to go down. There's plenty of opportunities for heading out and going shopping. And there's also a lot of community- based activities in the area that I wasn't used to when I was living down in Southern New Hampshire. Things like the fairs, the Farmers Market, River Fire in Berlin. I really enjoyed all of those things.
What does a typical (or not so typical) day look like for you?
Jessica: So, my job as a mobile crisis clinician is pretty different, I think than a lot of the other jobs. Here, we tend to work 12-hour shifts and we're really on call a lot of the time. So I do evaluations for hospitals in the area as well as community-based evaluation. So, if somebody calls into access point, needing a crisis evaluation, they'll reach out to me as well as the peer support team who either deploy to that client's house for the evaluation or I assess them over zoom. We determine if they're able to safety plan and remain in the community or if they need the higher level of care and usually head to an ER to start additional options for treatment. This allows me a lot of flexibility because my job is literally to wait around until I am needed for an evaluation. So, during the times that I'm waiting during my shift, I'm able to kind of have that work life balance, do what I need to for myself, but also set up for the day. I check in with hospitals to see if we have current clients there waiting for inpatient psychiatric beds, I check in with them, I check in with the psychiatric hospitals to make sure they have the referrals for those clients if they need any additional documentation where they're at. And then I follow up with that information to the hospital. So, they're aware of where each client stands in line or what is needed for them in order to get a bed and leave the ER, and go to the psychiatric hospital. My job also involves working a lot with the community for involuntary admissions, IEAs where I might need to talk with police officers or schools or other providers to determine what that client's level of needs are, and how I can assist them with getting what they need for their treatment. So that really is a lot of what my day is, is just evaluations, follow up communication and then checking calls. So if we have a client that was seen at the hospital and we safety plan them home, meaning they were able to remain in the community and did not need a higher level of care for inpatient. We like to follow up with them usually the day after sometimes a couple of days after, just to make sure they're doing well. Are they having any lethal thoughts? Or have they contacted any providers, continued with their safety plan recommendations and determine if they have any additional needs from there. So that's kind of what my day looks like as a mobile crisis clinician.
