Treatment of Substance Use Disorders without Judgement

Abstract

By Ebba Ribbing, Nursing; Mackenzie Robinette, Nursing; Tina Rozman, Nursing; Melanie Soller, Nursing; Phoebe Goodale, Nursing; Sarra Polisini, Nursing

Advisor: Mohammad Othman

Presentation ID: 137

Abstract: Currently, nursing professionals report feeling uncomfortable providing care to patients with substance use disorder due to a lack of education in the needs of this population. This project works to improve the comfort level of undergraduate nursing students in assessing, caring for, and referring patients with substance use disorder to treatment. In order to achieve this, undergraduate nursing students will be educated on the use of SBIRT, meaning Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment. This tool is used as a public health intervention to identify health risks, increase communication and coordination of care for patients with substance use disorder. A virtual teaching session that included an educational video and PowerPoint on this population and SBIRT usage was provided. A pretest and posttest were administered to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. When comparing the above tests, the majority of the results pointed toward student's comfortability levels around caring for this patient population as increasing as well as the knowledge and comfortability of using the tool as increasing. Teaching students about this population and the SBIRT tool can improve the undergraduate nurses comfort level. Incorporating more education about the substance use disorder population and SBIRT tool into the curriculum can improve the comfort of undergraduate nursing students. Future projects may involve investigating nursing students discomfort surrounding other specific patient populations.