Nursing Care of the Suicidal Patient

Suicide risk assessment needs to be a crisis intervention explored together with the person in care. The crisis intervention needs to start at the first encounter with healthcare and should be salient in all ensuing encounters and actions taken during the care. A caring approach which involves qualities like being welcoming, nonjudgmental, open-minded, and respectful can alleviate suffering and is crucial for assessment and forthcoming care, while an uncaring approach may cause the person to hide his or her needs, flee in affect, or refrain from seeking help during forthcoming suicide crises. Despite this, the competence required to connect and listen to another person is all too often neglected in hospital-based suicide prevention.

Nurses have an important role to play in suicide risk prevention, since they frequently encounter patients in suicidal crises. Furthermore, nurses’ competence involves both the biomedical and philosophical perspective on the person’s health and care which is needed for assessment and care. Recommendations for care stress the interpersonal relationships with the person’s narrative as essential. However, components often described as person-centered care, such as establishing a therapeutic relationship, showing trust and respect, facilitating communication, getting to know the person, sharing power and responsibility, and empowering the person, require systematic education, training, and implementation. This chapter provides examples on how communication skills and rapport can be developed and applied in acts of care. The chapter also describes an approach for suicide prevention and crisis intervention that synthesizes teachings from caring science with contemporary suicide prevention.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of Health Care Sciences, Ersta Sköndal Bräcke University College, Stockholm, Sweden Pernilla Omerov & Jennifer Bullington
  2. Centre for Psychiatry Research, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm Health Care Services, Region Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden Pernilla Omerov
  1. Pernilla Omerov