A nurse took his own life at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center last week, marking the second apparent suicide by a nurse in a matter of months.
On April 30, the nurse shot himself in the supply closet halfway through his shift in the emergency department, according to NBC Bay Area. His name has not yet been released out of concern for privacy for his family and colleagues.
However, Kaiser Permanente confirmed that the employee’s death was a suicide, noting that the incident is under investigation.
“Our hearts go out to the family, friends, and coworkers affected by this terrible loss. Our teams are on site providing emotional support and resources for staff,” said Rakesh Chaudhary, MD, physician-in-chief at the medical center, in a statement.
In January, another nurse, 27-year-old Michael Odell, who was working at Stanford Hospital’s neurological intensive care unit in Palo Alto, California, went missing. His body was found by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in the water near San Francisco’s Dumbarton Bridge 2 days after his roommate reported him missing.
Odell, a traveling nurse, first attempted suicide in the spring of 2020, after several weeks of work with COVID-19 patients, according to NPR. That April, Odell wrote on Facebook that he was experiencing “emotional burnout” after caring for patients who were at their sickest and isolated from their loved ones, STAT reported.
“Please don’t think me selfish; I get that my level of ‘suffering’ cannot compare to what these patients and their families are experiencing. But the fact is that I have an amazing support system and people who love me and tell me frequently that they do; I fear for those who do not,” he wrote.
He began seeing a therapist and taking antidepressants. Then, in 2021, he went through a breakup and his mother, who had dementia, died. Joshua Paredes, RN, a friend and a nurse at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, convinced Odell to return to San Francisco and live in his spare room. Odell started a contract with Stanford Hospital and moved in with Paredes in late 2021.
Just after Odell’s disappearance, Paredes created a Facebook group called “Find Michael Odell” and also posted on a Stanford Nurses Union page, asking for volunteers to help in the search. What followed was a deluge of messages of support and of personal stories, NPR reported.
Paredes and a handful of other friends see an opportunity for change in Odell’s death. In addition to pressing employers to improve access to mental health resources and foster more supportive working environments, they are working to build a peer support crisis line for nurses and certified nursing assistants, an initiative they’re calling Don’t Clock Out.
“The goal is to match them with a peer who can follow them, meet them where they are and determine what their wellness goals are,” Paredes told NBC Bay Area.
Roughly 250 healthcare workers have volunteered their support for the hotline as of late March, and a nonprofit that helps train military veterans dealing with mental health challenges is also providing guidance, NPR reported.
Nurses and Mental Health
According to a 2021 survey of more than 9,000 nurses conducted by the American Nurses Foundation, one in 10 said they felt “worthless,” and more than half of those working in critical care said they were not “emotionally healthy.”
Furthermore, the first national longitudinal study of nurse suicides in the U.S., published in 2020, showed that both female and male nurses are more likely to take their own lives compared with those in the general population.
Study author Judy Davidson, RN, DNP, of the University of California San Diego, emphasized that workplace stressors are “keenly important.”
“A lot of us would like to believe it’s the home issues driving these people over the edge, but I’ve triangulated the data now, and I feel fairly confident that there’s something in nursing as a profession that needs to be fixed to decrease the risk,” she told MedPage Today in 2020.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with a mental health concern or having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
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