Improving Community-Based Pediatric Health Care Professionals' Confidence in Providing Suicide Prevention Services

Community-based health care has a vital role in identifying youths at risk for suicide, providing initial interventions, and connecting patients to appropriate services. This study aimed to evaluate the reach and effectiveness of a youth suicide prevention training series, developed in accordance with the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) model, for community-based pediatric health care professionals.

The training series covered suicide risk screening, risk assessment, safety planning, lethal means safety counseling, referral, and follow-up. Participants' demographic, professional, and practice data were collected via a web-based portal during registration. For this retrospective pre-post study, participants were surveyed after the series to evaluate their confidence in navigating the care pathway and their intent to implement learned skills in their practice. The data were analyzed via descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, and chi-square tests.

Of 391 registrants, 290 participated in the series, of whom 144 responded to the survey. Most participants were female, were White, and practiced in urban settings. Participants in rural and frontier settings were proportionally overrepresented. The respondents' median confidence increased across all assessed skills (all, p<0.001). Confidence in assessing suicide risk improved the most, increasing from slightly confident to very confident. Ninety percent of respondents reported being likely or very likely to implement the care pathway in their clinical practice within 6 months.

This evidence-informed suicide prevention training approach appeared to be effective. The ECHO model may provide a replicable and scalable process to improve suicide prevention skills among community-based pediatric health care professionals.