Maintained Attitudinal Changes in Nursing Personnel After a Brief Training on Suicide Prevention

Abstract

Aim:To verify whether nursing personnel working at a general hospital change their attitudes after a brief training course on suicide prevention and if these newly acquired attitudes persist over a 6-month time.Method:317 nursing personnel attended a 6-hour training program. They answered anonymously pre- and post-training the Suicide Behavior Attitude Questionnaire (SBAQ) which comprises 21 visual analogue scale items divided in three factorial sub-scales. The scores on each SBAQ sub-scale (dependent variable) were compared along the time using ANOVA for repeated measures with rank transformation. The time of the measurement and characteristics of the nursing staff were considered as independent variables.Results:There have been positive changes in the attitudes and these gains were significantly maintained at the 6-month follow-up evaluation. Improvement was in the Feelings and Professional Capacity factorial subscales (p = 0.0001 and 0.01, respectively). There was no change on the Right to Suicide subscale.Conclusion:It was possible to demonstrate positive changes in the attitudes of nursing personnel as assessed six months after a brief training course on suicide prevention. As attitudes influence the effectiveness of the health care personnel interventions our findings may have important implications for the development of suicide prevention programs.

Attitudes towards suicidal behaviour and associated factors among nursing professionals: A quantitative study

“…In this study, lower perception of self-perception of professional competence and more negative feelings towards the patient mutually reinforced each other, a finding that was particularly notable among professionals with lower qualifications or less work experience (the assistant nurses group and the group without suicide/mental health training or experience). Only the association between training and self-perception of professional competence is similar to the outcomes of other Brazilian studies conducted with nursing personnel working at a general hospital that received training (Botega et al, 2007), nursing students after a training course (Bott et al, 2015) and nursing undergraduates who participated in psychiatric nursing disciplines, classes or laboratory about suicide (Moraes et al, 2016). Some of these studies also identified an association between training and less negative attitudes (Botega et al, 2007;Bott et al, 2015).…”

“…Only the association between training and self-perception of professional competence is similar to the outcomes of other Brazilian studies conducted with nursing personnel working at a general hospital that received training (Botega et al, 2007), nursing students after a training course (Bott et al, 2015) and nursing undergraduates who participated in psychiatric nursing disciplines, classes or laboratory about suicide (Moraes et al, 2016). Some of these studies also identified an association between training and less negative attitudes (Botega et al, 2007;Bott et al, 2015).…”

“…Professional training has been found to have a strong and positive association with favourable attitudes (Botega et al, 2005(Botega et al, , 2007Bott, de Araujo, Costa, & Machado, 2015;Kishi et al, 2011;Moraes, Magrini, Zanetti, dos Santos, & Vedana, 2016;Norheim, Grimholt, Loskutova, & Ekeberg, 2016;Ramberg, Di Lucca, & Hadlaczky, 2016;da Silva Cais, da Silveira, Stefanello, & Botega, 2011). However, there are little available data regarding the subject, and the relationships between attitudes towards suicide and many factors remain unclear (Karman et al, 2015;Kelly et al, 2014;McCarthy & Gijbels, 2010;Santos et al, 2014).…”

“…Furthermore, few studies have been conducted in Latin America, and studies that have previously assessed attitudes towards suicidal behaviour in Brazil have not assessed the perspectives of the emergency nursing staff (Botega et al, 2005(Botega et al, , 2007Bott et al, 2015;Moraes et al, 2016;da Silva Cais et al, 2011) who may play a singular role in suicide prevention. In this way, studies need to investigate health professionals' attitudes towards suicidal behaviour, especially considering the variations that have been found to exist in different countries, cultures and periods (Nebhinani et al, 2013;Talseth & Gilje, 2007).…”

Guidelines on suicide amongst anaesthetists 2019

“…Effective training in suicide awareness and prevention has been described in several settings and several programmes and courses exist at individual, group and organisational levels. The concept of mental health first aid (MHFA) training arose in Australia in 2001, as a means of training the public to help adults with mental health problems including suicide, and now exists in several countries and settings, including the workplace.…”