Do both healthcare professionals and patients benifit from suicideprevention training of professionals?

Adherence to evidence based practice guidelines in mental health care is not self-evident. Merely developing and publishing guidelines will not bring the wanted change because of time-restraint, resistance to change and organizational complexity. In order to gain greater acceptance and adherence to guidelines, guideline implementation is imperative.

The objective of this study is to examine if patients, professionals and the organizations benefit from a train the trainer course, that was developed to implement the new Dutch multidisciplinary practice guideline for assessment and treatment of suicidality.

Our primary outcome is change in suicide ideation in patients. We hypothesise that, as a result of the improved skills and confidence of healthcare professionals in the experimental condition due to the intervention, suicidal patients are better assessed and treated and will therefore more quickly recover from suicidal ideation. Also we expect less episodes of suicidal ideation, deliberate self-harm, non fatal suicide attempts and less health care consumption of patients in the units of the experimental condition.

Patients:

Via routine outcome measurement:

1. Start;

2. 1month;

3. 3months;

4. 6months.



Professional:

1. 2 weeks before intervention;

2. Directly after intervention;

3. After 3 months.

We implement the guideline with a train the trainer course called PITSTOP suicide that consists of:

1. A multidisciplinary interactive group training;

2. Given by role model clinicians;

3. Combined with an e-learning module;

4. And textbook material.

The training is one day with the e-learning module taking one hour.



In the experimental condition, hundred percent of the registered nurses, psychologists, physicians and psychiatrists will be trained in their own team, where personalized feedback is possible.



In the control group, the guideline is not implemented, but spread in the "normal" way, via internet, lectures, leaflets etc.