Suicide Prevention Education for Psychiatric Inpatient Nurses in Egypt

The completed suicide of a patient represents a critical event for any nurse who was in charge of or had some contact with the individual or their family. Nurses may blame themselves and experience feelings of worthlessness associated with their inability to prevent the patient's death. One way to prevent an attempted or completed suicide on the inpatient unit is to educate psychiatric nursing personnel in suicide prevention. The focus of the current article is to present and discuss the unique issues faced by nursing educators in Egypt and whether the education and training of nurses employed at a rural hospital in Egypt would be a useful step toward mitigating these high-risk behaviors and lethal actions.