Contemporary clinical trials
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Contemp Clin Trials · Sep 2013
Clinical TrialThe Emergency Department Safety Assessment and Follow-up Evaluation (ED-SAFE): method and design considerations.
Due to the concentration of individuals at-risk for suicide, an emergency department visit represents an opportune time for suicide risk screening and intervention. ⋯ While 'classic' randomized control trials (RCT) are typically selected over quasi-experimental designs, ethical and methodological issues may make an RCT a poor fit for complex interventions in an applied setting, such as the ED. ED-SAFE represents an innovative approach to examining the complex public health issue of suicide prevention through a multi-phase, quasi-experimental design embedded in 'real world' clinical settings.