Good Morning...
Let's shift gears for a moment, and add on to our previous post regarding the importance of assessment. Knowing what questions to ask, and how to ask them is an extremely important skill of psychiatric nursing. At times, it almost feels like we have to "read between the lines" in order to understand exactly what our patients are telling us. Complicating this further is the use of non-verbal cues during an assessment.
Assessing a patient's suicidality is number one. It is our responsibility to assess the patient's thoughts of self harm, and then provide interventions to maintain the patient's safety. But what about when a patient doesn't come right out and say that they want to kill themself? What if the patient only says, "I can't do this anymore." What do they mean by that? How can we evaluate the lethality of that statement?
For this blog, please read the following research article on suicidal patients visits to the ER.
http://www.touchbriefings.com/pdf/2459/Claassen.pdf
After reading the article, please post some examples of passive suicidal statements, and subsequent questions staff could ask to clarify the patient's level of suicidality.
Get creative...and feel free to add to other students' questions or statements.
Enjoy the day!
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