Health workers unprepared for trauma of dealing with suicide

HEALTH workers are often unprepared for the trauma of patients committing suicide and should be given more time to recover, a survey has found.

Some psychiatrists and ambulance crews have experienced up to 25 suicides of clients or patients in their careers, according to research among workers in the North Eastern Health Board. For emergency teams, it often involved treating people who have taken overdoses or cut themselves and subsequently died.

Almost 20% of the 447 respondents had a patient or client under their care die by suicide.

Of those, more than half had such an experience in the past two years.

Paul Gaffney, senior clinical psychologist with the NEHB, said many people in the health service thought they would never be affected by suicide.

“People think if you’re a good enough doctor or other professional, your patients won’t commit suicide. But no matter how good a job we do, it still happens,” said Mr Gaffney, a member of the research team.

The most common emotional response of those who had experienced a client or patient suicide were feelings of anger, guilt and sadness.

The report, jointly sponsored by the NEHB and the National Suicide Review Group, recommends people in all medical fields should be made to expect some experience of suicide.