Suicide risk assessment in the emergency department: An investigation of current practice in Scotland

Developing a clinical decision support system software prototype that assists in the management of patients with self-harm in the emergency department: protocol of the PERMANENS project

BACKGROUND

Self-harm presents a significant public health challenge. Emergency departments (EDs) are crucial healthcare settings in managing self-harm, but clinician uncertainty in risk assessment may contribute to ineffective care. Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs) show promise in enhancing care processes, but their effective implementation in self-harm management remains unexplored.

METHODS

PERMANENS comprises a combination of methodologies and study designs aimed at developing a CDSS prototype that assists clinicians in the personalized assessment and management of ED patients presenting with self-harm. Ensemble prediction models will be constructed by applying machine learning techniques on electronic registry data from four sites, i.e., Catalonia (Spain), Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. These models will predict key adverse outcomes including self-harm repetition, suicide, premature death, and lack of post-discharge care. Available registry data include routinely collected electronic health record data, mortality data, and administrative data, and will be harmonized using the OMOP Common Data Model, ensuring consistency in terminologies, vocabularies and coding schemes. A clinical knowledge base of effective suicide prevention interventions will be developed rooted in a systematic review of clinical practice guidelines, including quality assessment of guidelines using the AGREE II tool. The CDSS software prototype will include a backend that integrates the prediction models and the clinical knowledge base to enable accurate patient risk stratification and subsequent intervention allocation. The CDSS frontend will enable personalized risk assessment and will provide tailored treatment plans, following a tiered evidence-based approach. Implementation research will ensure the CDSS' practical functionality and feasibility, and will include periodic meetings with user-advisory groups, mixed-methods research to identify currently unmet needs in self-harm risk assessment, and small-scale usability testing of the CDSS prototype software.

DISCUSSION

Through the development of the proposed CDSS software prototype, PERMANENS aims to standardize care, enhance clinician confidence, improve patient satisfaction, and increase treatment compliance. The routine integration of CDSS for self-harm risk assessment within healthcare systems holds significant potential in effectively reducing suicide mortality rates by facilitating personalized and timely delivery of effective interventions on a large scale for individuals at risk of suicide.

Designing Implementation Strategies for a Digital Suicide Safety Planning Intervention in a Psychiatric Emergency Department: Protocol for a Multimethod Research Project

BACKGROUND

Suicide prevention is currently a national health priority in Canada. Emergency departments (EDs) are critical settings for suicide prevention, and in our local psychiatric ED at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, we plan to embed an app-based tool called the Hope app to support suicide safety planning intervention. The app is free and available on app stores, and usability tests have been completed. As a next step to embed this new tool into the routine clinical workflow, research is needed to assess determinants of and design strategies for implementation with the end goal of routinization.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this 2-phased research is to implement the app in the routine clinical workflow in our local psychiatric ED. The specific objectives are as follows: (1) understanding ED clinicians' perceptions and experience of implementing the app in routine practice and identifying barriers to and facilitators of implementation (phase 1) and (2) using findings and outputs from phase 1 and collaborating with service users, families, and ED clinicians to co-design implementation strategies for the app (phase 2).

METHODS

We will use an integrated knowledge translation approach throughout this project. In phase 1, we will conduct interviews with ED clinicians to identify implementation determinants using a behavior change framework. In phase 2, a co-design team comprising clinicians, ED service users, and families will design implementation strategies that align with the determinants identified in phase 1.

RESULTS

This protocol presents detailed information about the entire structure of the 2-phased research project. Ethics approval for conducting the qualitative descriptive study (phase 1) has been obtained, and the recruitment and data collection processes will be completed no later than December 2023. Ethics approval for phase 2 is underway.

CONCLUSIONS

Involving multiple knowledge user groups early in the research and decision-making process is crucial for successful implementation. Although co-designing is commonly practiced during innovation development, there is often a misconception that the responsibility for implementing what has been designed falls on others. This research aims to fill this methodological gap in the health informatics literature. By the end of this project, we will have developed theory-informed implementation strategies to support Centre for Addiction and Mental Health ED clinicians in adopting the Hope app to complete safety planning intervention. These strategies, guided by a behavior change framework, will target clinicians' behavior change and seamlessly integrate the app into the routine clinical workflow. In addition, this research project will provide recommendations on how to involve multiple knowledge user groups and offer insights into how the methodology used can be adapted to other areas within the health informatics literature.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

PRR1-10.2196/50643.

Exploring Uniformity of Clinical Judgment: A Vignette Approach to Understanding Healthcare Professionals' Suicide Risk Assessment Practices

OBJECTIVES

Suicide risk assessment often requires health professionals to consider a complex interplay of multiple factors, with a significant reliance on judgment, which can be influenced by factors such as education and experience. Our study aimed at assessing the uniformity of decision making around suicide risk within healthcare professionals.

METHODS

We used a factorial survey approach to gather information on healthcare professionals' demographics, clinical experience, and their decision on 3 vignettes of patients with suicidal ideation. We used Kruskal-Wallis tests for determining if there were significant differences between groups for continuous variables and Spearman rank correlation for measuring the association between continuous variables. Content analysis was used for analyzing free-text comments.

RESULTS

Responses were gathered from 79 healthcare professionals (nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians) who worked in primary care, mental health, or emergency department settings. Median suicide risk rates across all respondents were 90%, 50%, and 53% for vignettes 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Confidence in healthcare professionals' decisions was significantly associated with the clinical designation and personal risk profile of the healthcare professional in certain vignettes, with nurses and those willing to take more risks having a higher confidence in their decisions for vignettes 1 and 3, respectively. Treatment decision was significantly associated with mental health experience (i.e., those with lengthier mental health experiences were less likely to choose "admit to psychiatry ward" for vignette 2), clinical designation (i.e., nurses were more likely to "admit to psychiatry ward" for vignette 1), and practice setting. It should be noted that these associations were not consistent across all 3 vignettes, and results for each association were only specific to 1 of the 3 vignettes.

DISCUSSION

Findings compare decision-making practices for suicide risk assessment across several types of healthcare professions over a range of practice settings, with the high-risk vignette showing the least variability. Insights from this study are relevant when building clinical decision support systems for suicide risk assessment. Designers should think about incorporating tailored messaging and alerts to health professionals' mental health experience and/or designation.

CONCLUSIONS

Within our Canadian sample, there was considerable variability among healthcare professionals assessing the risk of suicide, with important implications for tailoring education and decision support.

Interventions to change clinicians' behavior related to suicide-prevention care in the emergency department: a scoping review

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this scoping review was to explore, characterize, and map the literature on interventions and intervention components implemented to change emergency department clinicians' behavior related to suicide prevention using the Behaviour Change Wheel as a guiding theoretical framework.

INTRODUCTION

An emergency department is a critical place for suicide prevention, yet patients are often discharged without proper suicide risk assessments and/or referrals. In response, we must support emergency department clinicians' behavior change to follow evidence-based suicide prevention strategies. However, reviews to date have yet to systematically and theoretically examine interventions' functional characteristics and how they can influence emergency department clinicians' behaviors related to suicide-prevention care.

INCLUSION CRITERIA

This review considered interventions that targeted emergency department clinicians' behavior change related to suicide prevention. Behavior change referred to observable practice changes as well as proxy measures of behavior change, including changes in knowledge and attitude.

METHODS

This review followed JBI methodology for scoping reviews. Searches included PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Embase, and gray literature, including targeted Google searches for relevant organizations/websites, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, and Scopus conference papers (using a specific filter). This review did not apply any date limits, but our search was limited to the English language. Data extraction was undertaken using a charting table developed specifically for the review objective. Narrative descriptions of interventions were coded using the Behavior Change Wheel's intervention functions. Reported outcome measures were categorized. Findings are tabulated and synthesized narratively.

RESULTS

Forty-one studies were included from the database searches, representing a mixture of experimental (n = 2), quasi-experimental (n = 24), non-experimental (n = 12), qualitative (n = 1), and mixed methods (n = 2) approaches. An additional 29 citations were included from gray literature searches. One was a pilot mixed methods study, and the rest were interventions. In summary, this review included a total of 70 citations, describing 66 different interventions. Identified interventions comprised a wide range of Behaviour Change Wheel intervention functions to change clinicians' behavior: education (n = 48), training (n = 40), enablement (n = 36), persuasion (n = 21), environmental restructuring (n = 18), modeling (n = 7), and incentivisation (n = 2). Based on the Behaviour Change Wheel analysis, many interventions targeted more than one determinant of behavior change, often employing education and training to improve clinicians' knowledge and skills simultaneously. Among the 42 studies that reported outcome measures, effectiveness was measured at clinician (n = 38), patient (n = 4), and/or organization levels (n = 6). Few studies reported implementation outcomes, such as measures of reach (n = 4), adoption (n = 5), or fidelity (n = 1). There were no evaluation data reported on the interventions identified through Google searches.

CONCLUSIONS

Interventions included in this review were diverse and leveraged a range of mechanisms to change emergency department clinicians' behavior. However, most interventions relied solely on education and/or training to improve clinicians' knowledge and/or skills. Future research should consider diverse intervention functions to target both individual- and/or organization-level barriers for a given context. Secondly, the ultimate goal for changing emergency department clinicians' behavior is to improve patient health outcomes related to suicide-related thoughts and behaviors, but current research has most commonly evaluated clinicians' behavior in isolation of patient outcomes. Future studies should consider reporting patient-level outcomes alongside clinician-level outcomes.

Risk Assessment of Self-Injurious Behavior and Suicide Presentation in the Emergency Department: An Integrative Review

INTRODUCTION

Globally, there is a lack of clarity regarding the best practice to distinguish patients at the highest risk of suicide. This review explores the use of risk assessment tools in emergency departments to identify patients at high risk of repeat self-harm, suicide attempts, or death by suicide.

METHODS

The review question ("Does the use of risk assessment tools in emergency departments identify patients at high risk of repeat self-harm, suicide attempts, or death by suicide?") focused on exposure and outcome. Studies of any design were included. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines were used. Study characteristics and concepts were extracted, compared, and verified. An integrative approach was used for reporting through narrative synthesis.

RESULTS

Nine studies were identified for inclusion. Two risk assessment tools were found to have good predictive ability for suicide ideation and self-harm. Three had modest prediction of patient disposition, but in one study, the clinical impression of nurses had higher predictive ability. One tool showed modest predictive ability for patients requiring admission.

DISCUSSION

This review found no strong evidence to indicate that any particular risk tool has a superior predictive ability to identify repeat self-harm, suicide attempts, or death by suicide. Best practice lacks clarity to determine patients at highest risk of suicide, but the use of risk assessment tools has been recommended. Nevertheless, such tools should not be used in isolation from clinical judgment and experience to evaluate patients at risk. Education and training to augment risk assessment within the emergency department are recommended.

Interventions to change clinicians' behavior in relation to suicide prevention care in the emergency department: a scoping review protocol

OBJECTIVE

This review aims to explore, characterize, and map the literature on interventions implemented to change emergency department clinicians' behavior related to suicide prevention using the Behavior Change Wheel as a guiding theoretical framework.

INTRODUCTION

An emergency department is a critical place for suicide prevention, yet many patients who present with suicide-related thoughts and behaviors are discharged without proper assessment or appropriate treatment. Supporting clinicians (who provide direct clinical care, including nurses, physicians, and allied health professionals) to make the desired behavior change following evidence-based suicide prevention care is an essential step toward improving patient outcomes. However, reviews to date have yet to take a theoretical approach to investigate interventions implemented to change clinicians' behavior.

INCLUSION CRITERIA

This review will consider literature that includes interventions that target emergency department clinicians' behavior related to suicide prevention. Behavior change refers to observable practice changes as well as proxy measures of behavior change, including knowledge and attitudes. There are many ways in which an intervention can change clinicians' behavior (eg, education, altering service delivery). This review will include a wide range of interventions that target behavior change regardless of the type, but will exclude interventions that exclusively target patients.

METHODS

Multiple databases will be searched: PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Embase. We will also include gray literature, including Google search, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, and Scopus conference papers. Full texts of included studies will be reviewed, critically appraised, and extracted. Extracted data will be coded to identify intervention functions using the Behavior Change Wheel. Findings will be summarized in tables accompanied by narrative reports.

A poststructural analysis: Current practices for suicide prevention by nurses in the emergency department and areas of improvement

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

To use a poststructuralist framework to critique historical, social and institutional constructions of emergency nursing and examine conflicting discourses surrounding suicide prevention. The aim is to also demonstrate practical guidance for enhancing emergency nursing practice and research with regard to suicide prevention.

BACKGROUND

Emergency departments have been historically constructed as places for treating life-threatening physical crises, thereby constructing other "nonurgent" health needs as less of a priority. Physical needs take priority over psychological needs, such as suicide-related thoughts and behaviours, negatively impacting the quality of care that certain groups of patients receive.

DESIGN

A theoretical analysis of the published literature on the topic of emergency nursing and suicide prevention was conducted and analysed using a poststructuralist framework.

METHODS

Relevant literature on the topic of emergency nursing related to suicide prevention was analysed for a poststructuralist construct of power, language, subjectivity and discourse. Implications to practice and research were identified, as well as expanding emergency nursing using a poststructuralist framework. SQUIRE guidelines were used (see Supporting Information).

DISCUSSION

The emergency department is a critical point of intervention for patients with urgent and life-threatening needs. However, the biomedical model and historical, social, and institutional expectations that influence emergency nurses' beliefs and values do not effectively respond to the needs of suicidal patients. One step to address this issue is to deconstruct the current understanding of emergency nursing as a treatment for only life-threatening physical crises in order to become inclusive of psychological crises such as suicide-related thoughts and behaviours.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE

How a poststructural framework can be used to expand emergency care is discussed. Examples include empowering nurses to challenge the "taken-for-granted" emergency nursing and recognizing the health needs that fall outside of the dominant discourse of emergency care.

Differences in attitude toward prevention of suicide between nursing and medicine students: A study in Mexican population

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the attitude toward suicide prevention in medicine and nursing students attending University in south Mexico, considering their family and personal history of suicide. Demographic features and self-reported personal and family history of suicide were evaluated in 355 Mexican students at the Health Sciences School. Their views toward suicide prevention was assessed using the Attitude Toward Suicide Prevention scale. Comparisons between medicine and nursing students were performed, as well as between had or had-not previous personal or family history of suicide. Our results support that nursing students showed the most negative attitude toward suicide prevention. Therefore, training programs and strategies encouraging a better attitude in suicide prevention are necessary to be implemented. It is also necessary to consider cultural, ethnic and family backgrounds of the students/of the population when developing new strategies.