Introduction A few years ago when I was working for Distress Centre Durham (DCD), I undertook a project to develop a new advanced training curriculum for telephone responder. Currently the Basic Training is 16 hours of in-class, plus another 16 hours of supervised phone shifts where a responder demonstrates that they have the active listening,…
Tag: suicide risk assessment
Suicide to Hope Workshop Review
Introduction Today I had the opportunity to attend the Suicide to Hope Workshop offered by LivingWorks. This course is a complete overhaul of the suicideCare Workshop that was previously offered by LivingWorks. The seminar takes 8 hours, and includes a participant workshop (like ASIST) and also some handouts that can be used with clients. The…
SIMPLE STEPS Model for Suicide Risk Assessment
Introduction The SIMPLE STEPS Model (McGlothlin, 2008) for suicide risk assessment provides a simple mnemonic similar to others like SADPERSONS (Patterson, et. al., 1983) or IS PATH WARM (from the American Association of Suicidology). Each of these is correlated with increasing suicide lethality and so this can be a useful short-hand to remember these items. Suicide…
Level of Care Utilization System (LOCUS)
Introduction The Level of Care Utilization System or LOCUS tool has been designed by the American Association of Community Psychiatrists (2009) to allow staff who work on inpatient hospital environments with patients with psychiatric problems (such as emergency departments, psychiatric sections of general hospitals or in psychiatric hospitals) to determine the level of care that…
Interprofessional Education in Suicide Prevention
Introduction to Interprofessional Education This is an essay I wrote in 2015 for the course HSRV 306 Critical Reflection for Practice at Athabasca University. Interprofessional education (IPE) is defined as “the process, through which two or more professions learn, with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and the quality of service” (CAIPE, 1997)…