A prospective study of suicide screening tools and their association with near-term adverse events in the ED.

Chang BP, Tan TM. Am J Emerg Med. 2015 Aug 10; [Epub ahead of print].

Suicidal ideation is a challenging clinical problem in the emergency department. This prospective study found that commonly used suicide screening questionnaires did not predict which patient would require unscheduled psychiatric evaluation, sedating medications, or physical restraints. These results highlight the need for improved tools to identify which patients are most at risk for instability in the emergency department.