Suicide Prevention in an In-Patient Setting

Abstract

Record ID: 112

Program Affiliation: Capstone

Presentation Type: Poster

Abstract: Inpatient suicide remains a pressing concern within inpatient healthcare settings,  necessitating effective prevention strategies and posing many challenges. This project aims to  educate and train nursing staff on the interventions that should be implemented to prevent suicide  in the inpatient population. Our main goal is to discover whether suicidal ideation patients in an  inpatient setting, with more vigorous monitoring via sitter, lead to less risk of self-harm attempts  during hospitalization. We created an education plan to present to a group of nine  medical-surgical nurses at the VA Hospital. It included a presentation on close proximity  monitoring, proper communication, effective handoff, and a pretest and post-test to assess their  knowledge. The presentation emphasized relevant statistics, appropriate interventions, self-harm  risk factors, and staff education specifically for patients with suicidal ideation. We examined the  nurses on the pretest questions to gauge initial knowledge, then presented our topic to educate  further. Following the presentation, the nurses completed the post-test. Two of the nurses got two  out of the four questions right, five got three out of four questions right, and two got every  question right on the pretest. Seven nurses got all the questions right on the post-test, and two got  three out of the four. The nurses were engaged throughout the presentation and stated they  believed these interventions would be helpful in their nursing practice to promote patient safety.