| Suicide is a major health problem and a leading cause of death throughout the world. Reforming health professional education has been identified as a primary goal for suicide prevention, and although nursing leadership is involved in this reform, nurses frequently lack the competence to care for patients in suicidal crisis. An identified gap in baccalaureate nursing education is instructional competencies for assessing and managing suicide risk. Instructional competencies are targeted components of knowledge, attitudes, and skills that nursing students need to know in order to assess and manage patients expressing suicidal ideation. This study aimed to develop a set of instructional competencies for assessing and managing suicide risk for baccalaureate nursing education using a modified Delphi Method, which is a systematic polling of the opinions of an expert panel knowledgeable on a given topic through iterative surveys, in an attempt to reach group consensus. A focus group, which is a group session moderated by a group leader with the purpose of collecting information on a designated topic, was first conducted in order to develop the Round I Survey which included forty-four competencies. After scoring these competencies, thirty-four were scored for inclusion, two were dropped and eight were revised according to panel members' comments. During Round II, the eight revised competencies were scored for inclusion, resulting in forty-two competencies in the final set of instructional competencies. Incorporating these instructional competencies into baccalaureate nursing education might increase the competence of nursing students in caring for patients at risk for suicide. |
