Zero Suicide Healthcare: Shifting Health Systems Towards Healing, Recovery and Learning

In this course, Sue Murray, OAM, Zero Suicide Institute of Australasia, lays out the seven elements of the Zero Suicide Healthcare Model, which aims to shift the paradigm from passive acceptance to active prevention of suicidal behaviours through creating a psychologically safe culture and continuous quality improvement driving systemic change. Murray names several health systems – including one in Australia – which have adopted such models and cites data showing substantial reduction in suicide rates when they did. She also outlines the differences at a Canadian hospital where the teams involved in the infrequent adverse events were compared with those involved in incidents that had positive outcomes; the differences were not down to number of staff or facilities available!