Implementation of a Standardized Suicide Risk Screening Tool: an Improvement Project in a University Counseling Center

This article describes a quality improvement project undertaken at the University of Idaho Counseling and Testing Center (CTC). This quality improvement project describes the use of the Ask Suicide Questions (ASQ) screening tool to accurately assess the severity of suicide risk during an initial assessment or crisis visit. Clinicians were provided with education and demonstration of the ASQ and shown how to incorporate this tool into their practice. 86 eligible appointments were included in the project for analysis. Simple descriptive statistics were used to present the resulting data. Results indicate that 30.3% of eligible appointments were screened. 43.8% of clinicians used this tool during their visits during the four-week implementation period. Results also indicate an acute positive screening rate of 2.8% and a negative screening rate of 61.1%. During this project, no clear indication for the lack of screening in more significant numbers was found. Future quality improvement projects would be well served to explore this phenomenon. This project concludes that continued education about suicide risk assessment is necessary. This project clarifies the importance of accurate suicide risk screening assessments for college students who seek mental health services