ND HOPES Healthcare Work
There are many opportunities for healthcare settings to play a role in preventing suicide. Zero Suicide is a systems-wide framework to prevent suicide in health and behavioral health systems. The Zero Suicide model includes a commitment from leadership to implement best practices in training, interventions, and follow-up designed to improve patient safety and reduce suicides.
Through ND HOPES, we are engaging health and behavioral health care providers to implement Zero Suicide across various settings, including but not limited to primary care, emergency departments, critical access hospitals, inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care, substance use disorder treatment, school-based health centers, and more.
The core elements of the Zero Suicide framework include:
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Lead - Lead system-wide culture change committed to reducing suicides.
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Train - Train a competent, confident, and caring workforce.
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Identify - Identify individuals with suicide risk via comprehensive screening and assessment.
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Engage - Engage all individuals at-risk of suicide using a suicide care management plan.
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Treat - Treat suicidal thoughts and behaviors directly using evidence-based treatments.
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Transition - Transition individuals through care with warm hand-offs and supportive contacts.
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Improve - Improve policies and procedures through continuous quality improvement.
Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment-Suicide Care
(SBIRT-SC)
Another important component of suicide prevention in health settings is simultaneously screening for substance use and providing brief interventions and referrals to treatment for those at increased risk. This is important because substance use is a leading risk factor for suicide. The Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment-Suicide Care (SBIRT-SC) model is an integrated, public health approach that identifies and provides care to individuals using substances and/or who are at risk of suicide. SBIRT-SC and Zero Suicide implementation work hand in hand to provide the highest level of treatment and support. Reach out to sbirtteam@norc.org for SBIRT training, technical assistance, and evaluation support.
Healthcare Secure Storage for our North Dakota Communities
30-min e-Learning Training
While some people think about suicide for weeks, months, or even years before acting on their thoughts, many people attempt suicide shortly after experiencing a crisis. Because of this, it is important to reduce access to anything in a person’s environment that they could use to hurt themselves. There are different methods that people use to attempt suicide, but in North Dakota, firearms are the most common way people die by suicide. A part of lethal means safety (LMS) in healthcare settings can involve distributing LMS materials such as gun locks to patients at risk of suicide. Healthcare settings can request cable locks, biometric cabinet locks, and biometric trigger locks to distribute gun locks to patients at risk of suicide. You can also request access to our FREE 30 min guided training about how healthcare workers can distribute gun locks to patients.
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This FREE 30 min self-guided training will teach healthcare workers how to:
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Explain secure firearm storage basics to a patient across a range of clinical encounters.
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Identify how different gun locks can be effective for different scenarios.
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Analyze a patient's current firearms and needs to choose the best lock type to suggest.
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Choose what next steps to take in preventing suicide in North Dakota.
Resource Spotlight
Zero Suicide Toolkit