title: Teaching physicians to assess suicidal youth presenting to the emergency department.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The 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.
  
  
  METHODS
  The 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.
  
  
  RESULTS
  About 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).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A brief, self-administered, Web-based training program shows promise for improving residents' knowledge about suicidal behaviors in youth.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics and the Center for Health Policy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. sarah.horwitz@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Sarah McCue
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Horwitz
authors.forename: Leslie J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Heinberg
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Storfer-Isser
authors.forename: Donna Holland
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Barnes
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Rahi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kapur
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Findling
authors.forename: Glenn
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Currier
authors.forename: Holly C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Wilcox
authors.forename: Karl
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wilkens
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003194:Computer-Assisted Instruction; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000193:education*; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D007396:Internship and Residency; D008297:Male; D059020:Suicidal Ideation; D000092864:Suicide Prevention