Ask HRC: Training One-to-One Sitters for Patient Suicide Prevention

​A risk manager recently wrote to ECRI Institute seeking tools and resources for training one-to-one sitters for patients who are assessed to be at risk of attempting suicide or other self-harm.

In our response, ECRI Institute notes that suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with 45,000 such deaths recorded among those 10 or older in 2016. While clinicians cannot predict which patients will attempt suicide, they can implement strategies to prevent inpatient suicides, such as assessing patients for suicide risk and adopting measures to reduce the likelihood that a patient will attempt suicide. Preventive measures include monitoring the patient closely, removing from the patient's room any structures and materials that the patient could...