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Free online suicide prevention training for health-care providers

Talking About Suicide: Empowering Healthcare Providers, Instilling Hope in Clients

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Health-care providers play a pivotal role in preventing suicides in Canada. They are ideally positioned to engage with clients experiencing thoughts of suicide and to provide, or link them to, potentially life-saving support and resources.

Around 45 per cent of people who die by suicide have seen their primary care provider in the month before their death, a figure that rises to about 60 per cent for older adults. Less than 20 per cent of people who die by suicide have seen a mental health professional in that period.1

The Talking About Suicide course is designed to provide health-care providers with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to recognize suicide risk and to engage in meaningful conversations with their clients about suicide. It includes scenarios, case studies, practice tips, and personal accounts from suicide attempt survivors — and it can be completed in as little as three hours.

Earn up to 4 certified Mainpro+® credits!

Upon completion of this course, health-care providers will be able to:

  • practise building trust with clients at risk of suicide and gain the confidence needed to have a conversation with them about suicide
  • comprehend the complexity of suicide and its prevalence in Canada
  • identify common suicide risk factors and protective factors
  • employ tools, resources, and strategies to evaluate and respond to suicide risk among clients in their health-care setting and to offer appropriate support
  • implement best practices for safety planning for clients experiencing thoughts of suicide
  • recognize the responsibility of health-care providers as individuals and as a team in talking about suicide and instilling hope in clients

 

Continuing Education Credits

Talking About Suicide has been accredited by the following organizations.

College of Family Physicians of Canada

This activity meets the certification criteria of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Quebec College of Family Physicians, a continuing professional development accrediting organization recognized by the Collège des médecins du Québec, and has been approved for up to 4 Mainpro+® Certified Activity credits.

Canadian Nurses Association

The Talking About Suicide training is currently approved by the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) for 2 continuing education credits. The CNA Accreditation Program upholds standards of quality for continuing professional development for nurses in Canada.

 

Acknowledgments

This training was developed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, the Talking About Suicide Advisory Committee, and CHA Learning, the professional development division of HealthCareCAN.

The original version of this training was entitled Suicide: Facing the Difficult Topic Together — Empowering Physicians and Nurses, Instilling Hope in Patients. It was developed in 2017 by the Mental Health Commission of Canada in partnership with the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention and MDBriefCase.

This program has received financial support from Health Canada.

Reference

1 Luoma, J. B., Martin, C. E., & Pearson, J. L. (2002). Contact with mental health and primary care providers before suicide: A review of the evidence. American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 909-916. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.159.6.909