Sign up for the paNOW newsletter

PAPHR implements suicide risk screening tool

Mar 4, 2015 | 5:47 AM

After years of talking, researching and planning, a screening tool used to identify suicide risk is being expanded across the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region (PAPHR).

The initiative will improve the suicide risk assessment tool that was previously in place.  In 2008, the Saskatchewan ministry of health issued a provincial “alert ensuring the safety of clients at risk for suicide.”

Brett Enns, regional director for community services, said around this time a number of suicides had taken place in close proximity to one another.

“So this provincial alert was issued to all the health regions to look at policy development, training and that sort of thing,” he said.  In that same year,  a national program that accredits policy came out with an operating practice to assess and monitor clients at risk for suicide.

This allowed for information about a patient to be handled correctly and passed on to other agencies when needed.  With this pathway of communication, each agency understood what  a client’s risk was and how to mitigate it in their department.

By 2010, a suicide task committee was formed at the provincial level to move forward on the development of the Provincial Suicide Prevention Framework—Enns was part of this taskforce.

“The basis of this was written so it would guide individuals working within our health system … guide and appropriately assess and manage people with risk of suicide,” he said.

The provincial framework was adopted and circulated to all 13 Saskatchewan health regions.

“It doesn’t matter whether you come into a facility here in the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region or you go to a facility in Moose Jaw or Yorkton or Weyburn or Regina, we use the same framework and protocol,” he said.

How it works

According to Enns, someone commits suicide every 40 seconds in the world, in 2011 3,728 people committed suicide in Canada.  The rate of suicide in northern Saskatchewan is twice the provincial average.

In addition, Enns said aboriginal youth have a risk of committing suicide that is five to six times higher than that of non-aboriginal youth.

“This is a very real issue within our communities. The good news is suicide is preventable. We need to be preventative, we need to be asking the question, we can’t be oblivious to the fact that people are struggl[ing] every day,” he said.

 “We need to develop a way so that we can support our primary care physicians and practices and our province … and certainly here in our health region, as well as doing that work within the facilities that we have in Prince Albert Parkland.”

With work going on since 2008, Enns said this has been a “staged event” and identified as a priority this year.

“We are in the process disseminating this framework and protocol out to all the different areas that clients would come into contact if they were to come into our health region and we’ve staged it so that we have a commonality now in our mental health, our addiction out-patient units, our mental health in-patient unit, our detox unit … walk-in units,” he said.

The improved suicide risk screening tool will be given to anyone who uses their services.  It includes asking seven questions to determine the client’s state of mind.

“Often suicide is related to folks who are suffering with depression possibly anxiety. Another high-risk group is those who have chronic, persistent mental illness,” Enns said.

This is a way of being preventative, he added.

Everyone is asked the same questions, so if there is a suicide risk, a safety plan is developed in co-operation with the client and family or caregivers.  Enns said now this plan gives the client someone to contact when they are out of their care and are having suicidal thoughts.

“And that is a very important part of the framework itself.”

Another key piece of the puzzle of the new framework’s outlines for staff, depending on the suicide risk, there is a mandatory follow up to assess the client’s level of risk until it is reduced.

When asked why it took so long to get the screening tool in place, Enns said there is no good answer.

“It’s a complex system, but I want to highlight about that is it wasn’t that we weren’t doing suicide risk assessment before because we were.  The change now is that everyone who comes into those services is asked those questions and that’s the major change,” he said.

“It opens the doors for conversation, it opens the opportunity for clinicians to help clients with coping mechanisms and strategies and help them identify that it’s OK to talk about that and it’s OK to feel that way.”

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84