Suicide Prevention for the COVID Era PEARLS

PEARLS is a bespoke, suicide prevention masterclass for General Hospital staff which aims to help healthcare professionals manage the impact of the Covid pandemic on patients' mental health.

A flexible, one to two-hour session based on need, the PEARLS 'Program to Encourage Active, Rewarding Lives for Seniors' course provides staff with the skills to detect warning signs of suicide, safety plan with the person and ensure that they they get the necessary help.

It has been designed to provide a refresher of essential skills for an empathic exchange for a person in suicidal distress - while providing a range of advanced skills in brief interventions like safety planning and resilience building.

It looks at how the Covid pandemic has affected people's mental health where they have lost family members or friends and have been unable to share their grief in person due to the lockdown.

Background on the programme

The General Hospital is at the crossroads of health care with thousands of daily patient interactions. Health care practitioners often sense and detect impending mental health crisis and within the confines of limited time and minimal information they act, setting in motion a sequence of events that ensures safety through referral to consultation liaison services or encouragement to seek help in primary care or an appropriate referral for assessment and treatment to secondary care mental health services.

However, the eyes can’t see what the mind doesn’t know. In the business of the Emergency Department, General Medicine / Surgery many also get missed. This demand on health professional’s time and an expectation to respond appropriately, effectively and rapidly to suicidal crisis is only set to grow with the parallel pandemic of psychological distress and dysfunction in the COVID era.

PEARLS has been specifically designed for a busy hospital setting and uses evidence-based theoretical concepts and its practical applications and training delivery are all:

• Innovative – novel approaches incorporating the latest research
• Intuitive – complexity simplified through structure and sequence for rapid learning and clinical use
• Interactive – case studies drawing on prior knowledge and experience used with adult learning principles.