03/19/2024
By Alexandra Morena

The College of Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation defense by Alexandra Morena on “Exploring Profiles and Change Trajectories of Clinician Suicide Prevention Attitudes and Confidence During System-wide Implementation of the Zero Suicide Care Model.”

Candidate Name: Alexandra Morena
Degree: Doctoral
Defense Date: Monday, April 1, 2024
Time: 12:30 p.m.
Location: Virtual Meeting via Zoom. Please contact Alexandra_morena@uml.edu or larissa_gaias@uml.edu for a link to attend.

Committee:

  • Advisor Larissa Gaias, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Yan Wang, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Celine Larkin, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School

Brief Abstract: Death-by-suicide accounts for over 40,000 deaths annually (Center for Disease Control, 2023). Many who die by suicide seek care from general medical settings in the year before death, and implementing suicide prevention practices in these settings is challenging and impacted by clinician-level barriers, including poor suicide prevention attitudes and low self-efficacy. Identifying clinician profiles is crucial as doing so can illuminate attitudinal and self-efficacy patterns within population subgroups. The current study aims identified distinct profiles and transition likelihoods of clinician’s suicide prevention attitudes and confidence amongst clinicians participating in a five-year implementation of the Zero Suicide care model. Clinician-level and contextual-level factors were incorporated to investigate predictors of profile membership and transition patterns. Associations between profile membership, transition likelihood, and self-reported practice use was also explored. Across time, four unique profiles characterized by varying levels of self-reported suicide prevention attitudes and confidence emerged. The profile characterized by poor attitudes toward universal screening, but high confidence reported higher self-reported practice use. Across timepoints, clinicians had the highest likelihood of transitioning into the profile characterized by mixed universal screening attitudes with high confidence. Clinician’s clinical role, setting, years of experience, and perceived leadership support emerged as predictors of either profile membership or transition likelihood. Findings from the current study contribute novel findings to pre-existing literature investigating clinician attitudes and confidence through revealing these unique clinician profile and transition patterns. Implications in the context of both suicide prevention and implementation science will be discussed.