Background and aim: Approximately 75 people die by suicide on the Australian rail network each year. Research by industry organisations has found that rail staff often play a critical role in intervening when people are distressed. It is therefore crucial that effective ‘gatekeeper’ programs are delivered to improve rail staffs’ knowledge, skills and confidence to identify potential suicidality, and provide them with the ability to respond safely and supportively. Based on previous training developed by the Samaritans and Network Rail in the UK, the TrackSAFE Foundation modified and then implemented rail specific suicide awareness training (SAT) for rail staff. The SAT was free, accessible via smart phone and took 30 minutes to complete. Our study aimed to determine whether online SAT improves rail workers’ confidence, willingness and ability to intervene with people who may be at risk of suicide on the railway network.
Method: 917 rail workers from Australia and New Zealand completed online SAT between October 2023 and February 2024 along with pre-training and post-training questionnaires. We assessed changes in knowledge about how to intervene safely via nine pre-training and post-training questions and assessed changes in self-reported confidence and willingness via 5-point Likert type scales. We used paired samples t tests to compare pre-training and post-training scores.
Results: Rail workers’ knowledge about how to intervene with people who may be at risk of suicide on the railway network improved from pre-training (mean = 6.85, SD = 1.18) to post-training (mean = 7.76, SD = 0.84) an increase of 0.91 points (95% CI, 0.84 to 0.98, p < .0005). Confidence to intervene also improved from pre-training (mean = 3.70, SD =1.07) to post-training (mean = 4.22, SD = 0.09) an increase of 0.52 points (95% CI, 0.44 to 0.60, p < .0005). Finally, willingness to intervene improved from pre-training (mean = 4.43, SD = 0.81) to post-training (mean = 4.56, SD = 0.70) an increase of 0.12 points (95% CI, 0.07 to 0.17, p < .0005).
Discussion: This preliminary evaluation of the online SAT provides some evidence that brief online suicide awareness training can increase rail workers’ knowledge about appropriate ways to intervene with people at risk of suicide and can also increase rail workers’ self-reported willingness and confidence to intervene.