Implementing Suicide Risk Screening in Pediatric Medical Patients: Feasible Quality Improvement Projects that Can Save Lives

ABSTRACT

With rising youth suicide rates in the US and around the world, medical settings have been leveraged as partners in prevention. Suicide risk screening programs can detect youth who may otherwise pass through the health care setting with unrecognized suicide risk. Outpatient primary care clinics and inpatient medical units are well positioned to intervene to address this critical public health crisis. Through the use of the Plan-Do-Study-Act quality improvement framework, suicide risk screening can be efficiently and effectively implemented in medical settings to identify suicide risk among youth, without overburdening busy healthcare systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Suicide risk screening
• youth suicide
• quality improvement

Acknowledgments

The views expressed in this abstract are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy of the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, or the Department of Health and Human Services.

Disclosure statement

The authors have indicated they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the NIMH (Annual Report Number ZIAMH002922); National Institute of Mental Health.