• Sarah McCue Horwitz, Leslie J Heinberg, Amy Storfer-Isser, Donna Holland Barnes, Michael Smith, Rahi Kapur, Robert Findling, Glenn Currier, Holly C Wilcox, and Karl Wilkens.
• Department of Pediatrics and the Center for Health Policy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. sarah.horwitz@stanford.edu
• Pediatr Emerg Care. 2011 Jul 1; 27 (7): 601605601-5.

ObjectivesThe objective of this study was to determine whether a 5-module self-paced computerized educational program improves residents' skills in assessing and managing youth presenting to the emergency department in acute psychiatric distress.MethodsThe evaluation used a quasi-experimental posttest-only design assessing both knowledge of the educational context of the program and self-rated pretest knowledge of program content with 32 residents recruited from 1 medical center in Cleveland, Ohio.ResultsAbout half of the respondents were female (48%); almost two thirds were white (65%), and few were trained in psychiatric assessment of children/adolescents. On average, residents had significantly higher scores on the posttest compared with the self-rated pretest (6.4 ± 1.1 vs 3.8 ± 2.3; P < 0.001), an effect size of 1.32. Residents responded positively to the modules and rated them highly on educational content (4.2 ± 0.5 on a 5-point scale) and satisfaction with clinical applicability (8.2 ± 1.2 on a 10-point scale) and found the program easy to navigate (8.5 ± 1.9 on a 10-point scale).ConclusionsA brief, self-administered, Web-based training program shows promise for improving residents' knowledge about suicidal behaviors in youth.

14 keywords...

hide…