Developing and pilot testing a suicide prevention "badge buddy" to improve suicide prevention practices

Providers without specialty training in suicide prevention are increasingly asked to screen and assess patients for suicide risk across health care settings. Moreover, suicidal crises are relatively low-incidence events associated with high provider stress. Low-cost, scalable strategies to support provider implementation of recommended screening and triage practices are needed. Plastic badges containing mnemonic aids and worn directly underneath one's formal identification badge (i.e., "badge buddies,") may be one promising approach. Although badge buddies are frequently used in health care domains to support recall of procedures in other low-incidence, high-stress situations, suicide-specific badge buddies have not been developed or tested. We developed, iteratively refined, and gathered preliminary acceptability and feasibility data for a suicide prevention badge buddy (SPBB). A user-centered design process in a large health care system identified critical badge content through interviews with a diverse group of stakeholders (n = 27, 70% female, M_age = 44) to inform the development of an initial SPBB prototype. Second round interviews and questionnaires with stakeholders about the resultant SPBB's usability, acceptability, and feasibility guided iterative refinements to design and content. Preliminary qualitative and quantitative data indicated that stakeholders viewed the SPBB as widely acceptable and useful for health system staff, particularly for those without formal training in suicide prevention and those who do not regularly interact with at-risk individuals. This feedback suggests high usability, acceptability, and feasibility for the final SPBB design and supports formal testing of this SPBB. Implications for evaluating SPBB effectiveness and implementation are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).