Increasing Rural High School Faculty Engagement in Preventing Adolescent Suicide: A Quality Improvement Project

Problem: Adolescent suicides continue to occur even though measures have been taken to help with their prevention. Adolescent male suicides increased by 31 percent and female suicides doubled between 2007 to 2015 (Center for Disease Control, 2017). Schools have been identified as an excellent place to utilize prevention methods. The lack of school faculty education and engagement has been identified as potential gaps that could help reduce adolescent suicide. Methods: A quality improvement project was developed to help increase rural high school faculty engagement and education. Faculty members were assessed at a rural high school in Idaho to identify their interest and previous experiences in suicide prevention programs. An educational presentation and a brochure, known hereafter as a tool kit, were developed and presented to faculty members. The presentation included current data on signs, symptoms, risk factors, and ways to increase engagement with students to prevent suicide. The tool kit synthesized information from the presentation to provide a readily available resource for faculty members. Post-education and post-implementation surveys were sent to faculty members to determine the effectiveness of the education and the engagement of faculty members in suicide prevention. Results: Post-intervention, the study found that 71.4 percent (n=15) of faculty members felt they had increased engagement with their students. The participants reported that 47.6 percent (n=10) learned more than previous adolescent suicide prevention trainings and 14.3 percent (n=3) reported that this was their first suicide prevention training. Conclusions: The educational presentation and the tool kit appear to be valuable resources to help increase high school faculty education and engagement in an effort to reduce adolescent suicide. Replication of this quality improvement project is needed to determine if similar rates of rural high school faculty members engagement increases.