Healthcare Safety Toolkit Library

A guide developed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness designed to provide individuals with mental illness and their families with support and resources. This guide provides a wealth of information on understanding mental illness, what to do in a mental health crisis and what to expect from treatment. It also includes a helpful portable treatment record that aids individuals and families in keeping up with health information and developing a plan of action for mental health crises.

This resource is an assessment tool for healthcare providers to determine suicide risk in adult patients.

A depression screening assessment to determine the level of a patient’s depression.

The Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale is provided in a brief version as a suicide risk screening tool. This short version rating scale assesses patients at risk for suicde that may enter a setting such as the emergency room quickly identifyng patients who are actively suicidal or experience suicidal thoughts.

The Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale full version is an assessment tool that provides an in-depth evaluation for patients at risk for suicide. The full version rating scale identifies patients who are actively suicidal or experiencing suicidal thoughts in a way that is more time-consuming. This tool is best suited for an environment conducive to this type of assessment such as an inpatient psychiatric stay.

Debriefing helps healthcare providers and the patient evaluate a crisis situation and plan to avoid future episodes throughout the patient’s stay. Interventions such as debriefing with patients post-violent episodes help to prevent reoccurring violence. This resource can serve as guide through the debriefing process.

It is essential to understand a security program. These resources help build and sustain a security program in healthcare. Sources delve further into risk considerations of law enforcement's presence in the emergency room and guidance to infant abductions.

Although it is healthcare's goal to maintain a safe environment at all times, violence remains a significant concern today. It is vital to implement processes to prevent workplace violence. Security practices can include an array of methods. The following documents provide best practices and alternative approaches that may be applied when handling violent encounters.