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The effectiveness of an educational tool on nurses' willingness to screen patients who are at risk for abusing alcohol and/or illicit drugs in the emergency department
Dissertation   Open access

The effectiveness of an educational tool on nurses' willingness to screen patients who are at risk for abusing alcohol and/or illicit drugs in the emergency department

Philip Landis
Doctor of Nursing Practice (D.N.P.), Drexel University
2015
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-6492
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Abstract

Risk assessment Two-item conjoint screen Nursing Substance Abuse
Background: A new generation of patients who have a documented lifetime use of drug abuse will require a unique approach to their healthcare needs. For patients presenting to the emergency department (ED), there are no standards or randomized control trials for screening tools for these patients. Methods: This project sought to answer the question: What is the effectiveness of an educational tool on emergency department nurses' willingness to screen patients who are at risk for abusing alcohol and/or illicit drugs? This was a quasi-experimental, mixed methods (quantitative/qualitative) study, which included a pilot of a two-item conjoint screen (TICS), which simultaneously identifies patient who are at-risk for alcohol and/or drug abuse. Results: The data analysis suggested that nurses already had an accurate knowledge of their ED population who are at risk for drug or alcohol abuse, and that they play a crucial role in identifying this population. In addition, the qualitative analysis extrapolated three themes that ED nurses identified as they cared for this population. Conclusions: ED nurses possess an accurate understanding of their patients who are at-risk for abusing drugs or alcohol. In addition, the TICS screen can easily be administered during triage in the ED to identify these patients. Randomized control trials need to be conducted in the ED to confirm what kind of screening tool is statistically significant to intervene with this population.

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