Mentor Clinic: Your Health Home

Mentor Clinic was created to give you access to a wide range of experts who can help you stay healthy and manage health problems when they come up. This approach is often called “collaborative care” — you and the Mentor Clinic team work together to reach and maintain your health goals.

Like any community-based clinic, there are some things we cannot do here — such as major surgery, advanced diagnostic tests, most imaging (X-rays, CT scans, MRI), emergency care, and critical care. But we can handle a great deal.

Emergency Departments: When Should You Go?

People visit hospital Emergency Departments (EDs) for many different reasons. The ED is absolutely the right place to go for a sudden, severe illness or injury. However, some people go to the ED because they think they need special tests or specialists, when a clinic like Mentor Clinic could help them just as well.

When you arrive at an ED, an experienced nurse or paramedic will assess your condition right away. They decide whether your problem is stable or urgent — a process called “triage” (a French word meaning “to sort”). People with the most serious conditions are seen first. This means that if your problem is not urgent, you could wait many hours.

ED staff also do not have access to your Mentor Clinic file, and you will likely be seen by providers who do not know your health history. For these reasons, it is better to bring primary care problems to a clinic like ours whenever possible.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) regularly reviews health problems that are treated in EDs but could be managed in a primary care setting. These are called Primary Care Sensitive Conditions (PCSCs). You can find their full list here: CIHI Primary Care Sensitive Conditions (PDF)

What We’ve Learned About ED Visits

In April 2026, Mentor Clinic began working with NS Health to collect information about our patients’ ED visits. We want to understand:

•       How many patients use EDs, and for what reasons?

•       What can we do to help you avoid unnecessary ED visits?

•       Would different clinic hours or services help reduce ED visits and improve your continuity of care?

Here is what we have found so far:

•       We are currently only receiving data on about 1 in every 10 adult ED visits due to administrative issues at EDs. We hope the new One Patient One Record (OPOR) system will help fix this.

•       Between October 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, Mentor Clinic patients visited four EDs in the Halifax, Dartmouth, and Lower Sackville areas a total of 560 times.

•       During that same period, 81 of those visits were for conditions that could likely have been managed at Mentor Clinic — and possibly more, since the CIHI list does not cover every situation.

•       The most common conditions were: viral illness (upper respiratory infection), flu-like illness, ear pain, sprained ankle (not on the CIHI list), and several others in smaller numbers.

What We Can Do

Based on what we’ve learned, there are several ways we can help:

Viral Illness

Viral illnesses are very common and do not respond to antibiotics. The best treatment is rest, fluids, and symptom relief as needed. They are uncomfortable and hard to avoid — just one of the realities of being human. Even a primary care clinic has limited options for treating viruses, and the ED is rarely the right place for them.

Sore Throat

Most sore throats in adults are caused by viruses, not bacteria. Only about 1 in 10 to 1 in 14 sore throats are caused by bacteria like “Strep throat,” and these usually come with other specific symptoms. Mentor Clinic — and some pharmacies — can test for Strep if needed. A viral sore throat usually clears up on its own within a few days with symptom relief.

Ankle Injuries

Ankle injuries can be assessed right here at Mentor Clinic. We use the “Ottawa Ankle Rule,” a well-tested medical guideline, to determine whether an X-ray is actually needed. In many cases, it is not. Ankle sprains (stretched or torn ligaments) are much more common than ankle fractures (broken bones).

Expanded Hours and Same-Day Appointments

Our ED data showed that most PCSC-related visits happened in the morning (9–11 a.m.) and in the late afternoon or early evening. We are working on expanding clinic hours to better cover these times. Mentor Clinic already has a Duty Clinician — a Nurse Practitioner or Family Physician — available each day for urgent, same-day appointments. We aim to accommodate same-day or next-day visits for conditions that do not require emergency care.

Putting It All Together

Mentor Clinic is here to be your health home — a familiar, trusted place where you can get care for most of your everyday health needs. Some of the conditions that bring patients to busy, crowded EDs can be handled safely and more quickly right here.

By using Mentor Clinic for primary care concerns — like colds and flu, sore throats, ear pain, ankle injuries, and others — you can avoid long ED wait times, stay connected with providers who know your health history, and receive more consistent, personalized care.

We are committed to improving our services based on what the data tells us — including expanding hours to match when you need us most. If you are unsure whether your concern requires an ED visit, please call us first. We are here to help.