An Educational Intervention to Improve Knowledge of Behavioral Healthcare Professionals Regarding Suicidal Assessment and Intervention for Adults in an inpatient Behavioral Health Unit: A Quality Improvement Project

BACKGROUND: Suicide is a major public health problem. Efforts to prevent suicide ideation have been inhibited by various factors, such as knowledge gaps and poor attitudes among the patients, their families, or friends, and even among the healthcare professionals. Training healthcare professionals on effective assessment, treatment, and prevention of suicide is necessary to enhance suicide prevention. PURPOSE: This quality improvement project determined the effectiveness of an educational intervention, which is focused on suicide risk assessment, to improve the knowledge and proficiency of healthcare professionals in the identification of suicidal behaviors and intervention among adults. METHODS: A quasi-experimental one-group, pre-test and post-test intervention design was used, which followed the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model. The setting was an adult behavioral health unit within a hospital. The sample size comprised seventeen healthcare professionals. The intervention was a one-time, in-person educational workshop lasting minutes. The Demographic and Professional Data Form measured variables, including age, gender, education level, employment status, previous suicide risk assessment training, and professional experience in healthcare. The second instrument was the Suicide Competency Assessment, which was administered as the study’ pre and post-test to evaluate knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to suicide risk assessment and intervention. RESULTS: The results of the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test (V = 0.00, p <0.001) demonstrates a statistically significant improvement in participants’ knowledge and proficiency in suicide assessment and management following the educational workshop. The median pretest score (Mdn = 14.00) was lower than the median posttest score (Mdn = 18.00), confirming the effectiveness of the intervention. DISCUSSION: The results of this quality improvement project demonstrated that an educational workshop on suicide prevention and management is effective in improvement in the participants' knowledge and proficiency in conducting suicide assessments and identifying appropriate interventions