|
We do not conduct this assessment prior to the patient coming in on the day of surgery. First, over the phone we don't know who may be listening or in the room and the patient might not share all the information, this is the same for abuse questions. Secondly, we don't do it in the preadmission clinic visit as things may change between that time and the time they arrive and we would need to do it again. We do conduct the suicide screening on AM Admits and observation surgical patients but not on our one time only outpatient surgical patients. We will conduct the screen by the 3rd visit if it was a recurring outpatient, but we don't serve that population very often. We use the Columbia Screening tool and we currently use Cerner and it is built into our Admission Intake form. We have a protocol on the form instructing the nurses what to do depending on the score. Then we have a "suicide toolkit" available with more instructions and resources available on our intranet. Social Worker is also triggered consult for the higher results.
|