Heidi Vawdrey has been a registered nurse for 20 years, 17 years of which were in adult intensive care and the last three as an advanced practice  registered nurse working in family medicine.  In the ICU, she frequently cared for people who had survived overdose suicide attempts.  When she began her doctoral program at the University of Utah to study to become a  family nurse practitioner, it became apparent very quickly how much  mental health is deeply intertwined in physical health. 

Heidi has been volunteering with Healthy Riverton, a citizen led community committee, for nearly five years now, and one of their primary focuses is on suicide  prevention.  Through Healthy Riverton, she is a certified QPR instructor, a  nationally recognized suicide prevention curriculum.  In her private medical practice, she screens widely for mental health symptoms and unresolved trauma. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Utah in the College of Nursing, and educates her students on this approach as well.  She was never trained or particularly comfortable with having hard discussions about suicidal thoughts as a bedside nurse, and it's become such a pressing problem that it is part of her quest as a professor and provider to normalize this for the new generation of providers and give them the tools to handle it.

Some resources Heidi shared during our chat include the following: