Webinar Wednesday - Hope by CAMH: An app-based approach to suicide safety planning

Over 4000 Canadians die by suicide every year (an average of 11 per day), making suicide prevention a national priority. Mental health clinicians play a large role in treatment and care for patients with suicidal ideation or behavior, including carrying out best practices for suicide prevention such as collaborative safety planning with patients. Gaps currently exist with the fidelity of implementing safety planning within routine clinical care. Barriers to using paper-based safety plans can include a lack of portability and accessibility by patients in the time of crisis due to misplaced plans. Safety planning through smartphone apps are a feasible strategy to due to their accessibility, but the integration of mental health apps into patient and nursing/ clinical workflows remains a largely unexplored area of practice. We will present on one such smartphone app within this presentation.

Presented by: 

Dr. Lydia Sequeira is a mental health informatics researcher, and a CIHR Health System Impact Postdoctoral Fellow at CAMH’s Digital Mental Health Research Lab and Canada Health Infoway’s mental health team. Her work is focused on improving mental health care and service delivery through technology, including studying the usefulness and integration of mobile apps into care. Her doctoral work at UofT’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation involved studying clinical decision support for suicide, and she’s had experience building and implementing electronic health records across hospitals in Toronto. Lydia is also a course instructor at Michener's Digital Health and Data Analytics Program and guest faculty at University of Toronto’s Master of Health Informatics Program.

Dr. Nicole Thomson, is a senior health care leader with considerable experience in clinical leadership, research, education, and policy. She is a Certified Health Executive (CHE) and Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS). Nicole is an occupational therapist and completed her PhD in Rehabilitation Science from the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto. She is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at University of Toronto, and serves as a Trustee for Bloorview School Authority and is a member of the Children's Treatment Network Quality Committee.

October Webinar Wednesdays are sponsored by Quest Diagnostics.

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