The Effects Of Substance Abuse In Nursing

Nurses are heroes. Nurses are trusted individuals. We look to nurses to provide patients with not only the proper medical care but also with providing the personal care and support that they need. Sadly even our heroes can fall. When we look at substance abuse we all have preconceived ideas as to what we believe a substance abuser looks like. However the stigma does not always fit the idea of what a substance abusers looks like and what they do. In America alone there are over 300,000 nurses who are suffering from substance abuse. Approximately every one in ten nurses is suffering from substance abuse (Crowley, 2013). This surprising statistic shows the need for change; our nurses are our backbone of our world. The issue of substance abuse

Some of the reasons why nurses turn to substances for relief include; emotional impairment, drug use, alcoholism, and emotional abuse due to low self-esteem, overachievement, and overwork(Dunn, 2005). The environment in which a nurse works can have a great impact on how the nurse deals with the stressors of work. A nurse’s home environment can also have an effect on the nurse’s risk of substance abuse. A nurse is helping troubled family members either in a positive or negative effect. An example of a negative environment for the patient would be one in which the family is enabling the nurses addiction. On the other hand a positive environment would be if the family would be encouraging of the abuser to seek help and to reform their life in order to better sever the community and others. One of the facts that lead nurses to developing substances abuses is that nurses have a higher incidence of alcoholism in their family. Familial alcoholism leads to alcohol abuse in approximately 80% of nurses who had an alcoholic family member (Dunn,

There are many programs in the community that can provide those services. Some of those services include; employee assistance programs (EAPs), support groups, such as 12-step programs (Alcoholics Anonymous [AA] and Narcotics Anonymous [NA]) and peer support groups, inpatient treatment programs, outpatient treatment programs, individual counseling (Crowley, 2013). These programs are used to help bring the nurses back from their use of destructive substances to once again integrate back into society in a healthy way and also regain their ability to practice nursing.

Combating substance abuse in nursing can incorporate all three levels of prevention; primary, secondary and tertiary. The primary level of prevention deals; with the providing information preventing introduction of exposures that cause disease or injury, changing unhealthy or unsafe behaviors that can lead to disease or injury. In the case of substance abuse this would mean avoiding the drugs altogether and seeking help if you feel the urge to begin to use the