Abstract

With the increased role of nurses in caring for patients with substance addiction, there was a clear need to develop the Addiction Nursing Competencies to guide and support the nursing workforce.

A literature search revealed a lack of formal instruments to assess and guide nurses in caring for persons with substance use disorders.

The Addiction Nursing Competencies were created using existing nursing education frameworks and addiction nurse care manager clinical guidelines.

Background

Healthcare workers across the world have risen to the demands of treating COVID-19 patients, potentially at significant cost to their own health and wellbeing. There has been increasing recognition of the potential mental health impact of COVID-19 on frontline workers and calls to provide psychosocial support for them. However, little attention has so far been paid to understanding the impact of working on a pandemic from healthcare workers’ own perspectives or what their views are about support.

Methods

Key healthcare databases (Medline, PsychINFO and PubMed) were checked...

Background

Interdisciplinary collaborations (i.e., where various disciplines work coordinated and interdependently toward shared goals) are stated to yield higher team effectiveness than multidisciplinary approaches (i.e., where various disciplines work in parallel within their professional boundaries) in somatic health care settings. Nevertheless, research is lacking on interdisciplinary approaches for alcohol use disorder (AUD) treatment of hospitalized patients as these types of approaches are still uncommon. This study aims to evaluate an innovative interdisciplinary AUD treatment...

A recent study has found that embedding specialist Addiction Nurses within general practice teams can help address alcohol problems in deprived areas.

In this blog, the lead author Dr Andrea Mohan examines why the role of the Addiction Nurse is so important.

The blog post covers:

Alcohol and health

Managing alcohol problems in primary care

The role of specialist Addiction Nurses

How do patients respond to Addiction Nurses?

Brief treatment (BT) or regular outpatient alcohol use or substance use disorder (SUD) treatment is a key element of the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) model. It can be an effective, short-term, and low-cost treatment option for many people who misuse alcohol and drugs. Nevertheless, inconsistent BT implementation often costs similar to regular outpatient care. Prior research is also prevalent with inconsistent operationalizations regarding the measurement of BT received by patients. Therefore, there is a need to more explicitly identify and document...