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10 Working Nurse l WorkingNurse.com August 12–September 16, 2019 ON THE QUICK Nursing & Healthcare News Nurses and Suicide Study points to elevated risk S tress and burnout can cause nurses to leave the profession for good, but a new study suggests that they can also put nurses at ele- vated risk of suicide. Occupational Hazard? Several years ago, UCSF nurse scientist Judy Davidson, RN, DNP, FCCM, FAAM, asked a difficult question: Is suicide an occupational hazard for nurses? There were no recent statistics for RN sui- cides, so Davidson and her colleagues had to gener- ate their own, using data from CDC National Violent Death Reporting System. Their conclusion, recently published in Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, is that the risk of suicide is indeed greater for nurses of either gender, whether current or retired. Greater Risk for Men The estimated suicide mortality rate for female nurses for the period studied was 11.97 deaths per 100,000 persons per year. For male nurses, suicide mortality was 39.8 per 100,000 persons per year. By comparison, the overall suicide rate for all women 20 and older for the same period was 7.58 per 100,000, while the overall rate for men 20 and older was 28.2 per 100.000. Ending the Silence The difficulty the research team faced in generat- ing these estimates underscores a much larger problem: Nurse suicide is little-studied and little- discussed even within the profession. Although we all know the emotional toll nursing can take on its practitioners, the study's authors lament that nursing organizations and institutions have been slow to develop ways to identify and support nurses who may be in crisis — or struggling with the aftermath of a colleague's suicide. Just measuring the scope of the problem won't solve it, but the authors hope that these mortality estimates will be a first step in ending the silence that surrounds this painful issue. WN The Vaping Epidemic Almost half of California teens now use e-cigarettes! O nce a hipster fad, vaping is rapidly emerging as a major pub- lic health issue. New data shows that almost half of California teenagers are e-cigarette users. More Girls Than Boys Forty-eight percent. According to recently released data from the 2017 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), that's the percentage of California teens 18 and younger who now use e-cigarettes. Working Nurse has previously reported on the enormous boom in e-cigarette use among teenagers. The most recent National Youth Tobacco Survey estimated that 20.8 percent of high school students and 4.9 percent of middle schoolers nationwide now "vape." However, the CHIS results suggest that e-cigarette use in California greatly exceeds even those alarming figures. Interestingly, the data indicates that California girls are significantly more likely than boys to vape. Almost three-fifths (58.9 percent) of teen girls reported using e-cigarettes in the past month, compared to 40.5 percent of teen boys. Nicotine Addiction and Poisoning Young people who start vaping now may be gaining a habit that will be hard to break. Back in February, a paper in the British journal Tobacco Control noted that over the past four years, e-cigarette manufacturers have dramatically increased the amount of nicotine in their e-liquids, from 1 to 3 percent by volume to 5 percent or more. Ostensibly aimed at heavy smokers, these high-nicotine liquids deliv- er levels of nicotine comparable to smoking several packs of cigarettes. The paper's lead author, Stanford professor Robert Jackler, M.D., warns that not only do such high concentrations of nicotine pose significant addiction risks, these liquids — which are often fruit- or candy-flavored — could also prove a deadly temptation to younger children. "A single teaspoon is toxic enough to kill five toddlers," Jackler says. WN Teenage girls in California are more likely to vape than teen boys For direct links to the websites cited, find these articles at WorkingNurse.com