Suicide Intervention Training

So, if I thought that my job wasn't brain draining enough, two days worth of suicide intervention training really hit that ball home. I am exhausted. Two solid days of talking only of suicide, whether you think it's important to stop or not is enough to make me wanna sleep for the entire weekend.

For the most part the group that I was taking the training with was amazing. There was one person that the people I sat with didn't particularly care for, and it wasn't hard to see why. You know those people that always have ton interject the conversation with a story about their lives that has nothing to do with anything the group was talking about, but one word that was said might have been the same, so they thought that was an invitation to tell a long winded story about NOTHING? Yeah, she was like that. For TWO days.

I don't think I can fully explain how difficult it is to learn anything with one of these people around. You'd know if you have experienced it, but for the rest of you I really don't have anything to compare it to.

The good thing is, despite the constant redirection from the person in the room, I think the two day workshop was successful. Those that I have talked to feel as though they got quite a bit out of the two days, and I know that I definitely feel more comfortable in my job because of the training. I think that all nurses should probably have this training. We work in a job where we are more likely to come across suicidal people more often then say a welder, so it seems only normal that we should get a little extra training. Problem with this idea is the fact that even in the health care field the idea of suicide is still really frowned upon. Even this week I had someone ask me why we were even intervening. I guess the idea out there is, "if you want to die, then do it. Stop wasting my time." It's very frustrating.

There is nothing worse than working in a profession that is supposed to stand out as a profession that is compassionate and caring and hear people talk about suicide as something that isn't worth helping people about. It's sickening.