An Article Review on Suicide Assessment and Nurses (NR326): What Does the Evidence Show?

An Article Review on Suicide Assessment and Nurses: What Does the Evidence Show?
Students Name
By
Cindy Bolster, MN ARNPCarrie Holliday, PhD ARNPGail Oneal, PhD, RNMichelle Shaw, PhD, RN
Introduction
The article “Suicide Assessment and Nurses: What Does the Evidence Show? was written by the four above mentioned authors and seeks to review the state of the science of suicide training for nurses in the U.S and in the world over. The training and empowering of nurses is believed to be the key towards the much sought after prevention of suicide and suicidal thoughts and attempts. This is attributed to the saddening fact that most registered nurses also known as RNs have little or no valuable training on how to handle a suicidal patient. Thus an important yet neglected field of science in the mental health and nursing department.
As the article would statistically elaborate, nearly1 million deaths per annum are usually as a result of suicide. In the United States alone, thirty thousand deaths are accredited to the aforementioned figure. In retrospect, during the Vietnamese war (1968-1973) in a crazy twist of events, while 58,000 people lost their lives in the war; 220,000 U.S. citizens lost theirs to suicide (Institute of Medicine, 2002). Astoundingly indeed. Minno & Smith (2001) brought forth a far more worrying statistics as they showed that the number of suicides exceeded those of homicides by the ratio of three to two; a ratio that has been observed to remain constant for a century.
In spite of the appalling statistical evidence shown, positive sentiments by the World Health Organization WHO ( 2014) found that Suicide was a preventable public health concern and therefore served to strengthen the resolve and led to the writing down of copious amounts of suicide literature whose sole purpose was to break down evaluation methodologies and provide the much needed information from the research conducted by the primary prevention programs whose purpose was to educate the public through creation of awareness via campaigns and through the introduction of facilities such as installation of crisis telephone lines which served in assisting patients to reach out and seek for help before it was too late for them.
The article further cited that a big number of suicide cases sprung a month after a visit to a healthcare provider noted (Luorma Martin & Pearson, 2002). It was therefore imperative and logical for the healthcare providers to be sensitized into intervening and watching out for any disturbing signs of mental disorders in their patients (Mann and colleagues, 2005).
In a nutshell, the article identifies three relevant themes which serve to contribute a greater deal in the mental nursing department. Misguided beliefs and attitudes of nurses on the subject of suicide have left a lot to be desired. Neville & Roan (2013) identified the level of education, religious beliefs and prior experience with suicidal patients as negatively impacting as little significance is rendered in a patients safety and full recovery; a point supported heavily by (Anderson & Standen, 2007). The latter also found that complex attitudes that nurses portrayed towards youth who w...