Event & Training Types: General Webinar

In a trauma-informed approach, a behavioral health organization understands and develops a framework to best serve clients with histories of trauma. The system, and all employees in the system, understands the role that trauma can play in each person’s care and recovery. With trauma-informed care, the organization develops safeguards to ensure that the setting in which services are delivered, and the particular services offered are competent, safe, evidence-based, patient-centered, and do not re-traumatize individuals with histories of trauma. The input of those with lived trauma experience is essential in the development, delivery, and evaluation of services.  The Zero Suicide approach frames care for those at risk for suicide in much the same way that trauma-informed care provides a framework for serving those with histories of trauma. Many of the principles are similar: provide timely, effective, competent, evidence-based services that consider the individual’s history and relies on the input of those with lived experience to improve the agency’s care. Given the similarities between these two frameworks and the overlap in clients presenting with both trauma and suicide, several organizations have begun to pair Zero Suicide with their trauma-informed care initiatives. During this webinar, we will explore the relationship between trauma-informed care and Zero Suicide, and hear about two organizations that have designed training and policies using both frameworks. 

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to (1) Explain the prevalence and impact of traumatic stress and its relation to suicide; (2) Describe the similarities of Zero Suicide and trauma-informed care; and (3) Discuss ways to embed a Zero Suicide approach in an organization that has already adopted a trauma-Informed care culture.

Zero Suicide and Trauma-Informed Care

Webinar Presentation

Health and behavioral health care (HBH) organizations and providers implementing suicide prevention practices often have concerns about liability and legal issues. Providing quality patient care while minimizing liability risk is a priority across HBH organizations, especially when caring for patients at risk for suicide. Liability risks can be reduced when providers deliver patient-centered care with embedded systems-level communication and documentation practices.

Health and behavioral health care organizations can support providers and manage risk by adopting practices that ensure: suicide risk is properly identified and assessed; timely and effective treatment that allows for patient choice and involvement is provided; patient health information is appropriately communicated between providers, patients and collaterals; and documentation is thorough.

This webinar will explore the legal and liability issues related to implementing systems-level changes designed to improve suicide care practices. Participants will hear from three experts who will discuss common liability concerns including those related to confidentiality and HIPAA, key elements considered in liability cases, and strategies to minimize liability against a provider or health care organization.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to (1) Identify misconceptions related to provider liability in litigation involving patient suicide; (2) Describe suicide care practices that are of particular importance in liability cases; and (3) Explain system- or organizational-level improvements to suicide care that can enhance an organization’s abilities to deliver quality care and minimize liability concerns. 

Zero Suicide Webinar: Legal and Liability Issues

In order for campus suicide prevention initiatives to be effective and appropriate,  students  voices must be included in all levels of prevention work, from strategic planning to implementation and evaluation. In this webinar, three universities in Wisconsin will share their varied approaches to engaging student stakeholders in suicide prevention efforts and how doing so helped make their suicide prevention activities more successful. Presenters will provide overviews of various models for student engagement, share how to translate student engagement initiatives to other campuses, and discuss challenges, successes, and lessons learned.  The three presenters are either formerly or currently project staff for Garrett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention grants at their universities. 

Speakers:

Valerie Donovan, MS, CRC, works in Campus Health Initiatives and Prevention at University Health Services as the Suicide Prevention Coordinator in January 2013. In this role she addresses suicide as a public health issue on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus as a part of a multi-faceted strategy for engaging with partners on broader student mental health needs. With campus and community partners, she works to strengthen campus practices and policies relating to suicide prevention and mental health services, reduce stigma surrounding mental health issues, provide education to the campus community, and promote help-seeking behaviors among students. She is the chair of UW-Madison’s Suicide Prevention Council and also works to support student activists engaged in suicide prevention and mental health promotion. She holds a master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jennifer J. Muehlenkamp, Ph.D., received her doctorate in clinical psychology, with a specialty focus on Suicidology, from Northern Illinois University in 2005. In addition to having her scholarly work recognized by awards from the American Association of Suicidology, Dr. Muehlenkamp provides frequent clinically-focused workshops on topics related to self-injury and suicide risk detection, intervention, and prevention. She launched early programming focused on suicide prevention at UWEC in the spring of 2012, and is currently the project director of UW-Eau Claire’s GLS Campus Suicide Prevention grant awarded by SAMHSA in 2014.

Kelley Tipton, MPH, is the Coordinator for University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s (UWM) Suicide Prevention Project. In this role, she provides leadership for project evaluation activities, coordinates development of educational materials, the Campus Connect Suicide Prevention training program, and the Life Happens. STUDENTS CONNECT! College SOS training program. Ms. Tipton received her B.S. from Kentucky State University (Frankfort, KY) and earned her MPH from West Chester University (West Chester, PA). Prior to joining UWM, she spent 9 years working with ECRI Institute (Plymouth Meeting, PA) as a healthcare technology analyst. She provided procurement advice to member hospitals, conducted comparative effectiveness reviews, and collaborated on manuscripts for the Annals of Internal Medicine and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. 

Webinar powerpoint slides

SPRC is currently exploring best practices for tribal suicide surveillance through a project that serves to identify resources, strategies, and tools that tribal communities can use to develop suicide monitoring and surveillance systems that can demonstrate the impact of their projects. As part of the process for this project, we are conducting key informant interviews with suicide prevention and tribal surveillance experts from across the country. This webinar will describe the rationale for developing a tribal suicide surveillance project, the methods used for this inquiry, and preliminary findings from our key informant interviews.

August 30 Tribal Surveillance Webinar ppt_final.pdf

The United States (U.S.) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Mental Health Commission of Canada highlight the work of the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership and the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (in the U.S.), and introduce a series of webinars on community suicide prevention to take place in the coming year.

Webinar Slides

A patient’s death by suicide in health and behavioral healthcare organizations can have a significant impact on family members, other patients, and staff. It may be even more destabilizing or demoralizing in systems where significant changes to improve suicide care had been implemented. Optimal postvention practices in health and behavioral healthcare organizations highlight immediately supporting the family, other clients and staff, conducting root cause analyses, and embedding policies and protocols supporting postvention actions into the organization’s operations. Consistent with a Zero Suicide framework, leadership should ensure that policies and practices promote an organizational response that is consistent with a just, no-blame culture that remains focused on continuous quality improvement in the aftermath of a patient suicide.

This webinar will focus on how health and behavioral healthcare organizations respond following a patient suicide death. Participants will hear from health care leaders and experts who will discuss key components of an organization-level postvention plan. They will explore considerations for supporting patients, staff and the community, and continuing to provide quality care. Additionally, a clinician survivor will share her perspective on what she felt was supportive after experiencing a patient suicide.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to (1) Explain how a health and behavioral health organization’s response to a suicide death can support improvements in suicide care practices; (2) Describe the role of Root Cause Analysis in a postvention response; and (3 )Identify steps that can be taken by organizations to support staff, other patients, and the family following a patient’s death by suicide.

Zero Suicide Webinar: After a Suicide: Postvention in Health and Behavioral Healthcare Settings

Transcript 2016-12-08 After a Suicide-The Zero Suicide Approach to Postvention.pdf