Laina M. Gerace

Enhancing Nursing Competence with Substance Abusing Clients

Alcohol and other drug abuse, major threats to health, pose challenges for nurses in virtually every practice setting. Progress toward increasing nursing competence in the addictions field is being made through the development of practice standards and model curricula and through federal initiatives to increase faculty expertise in this field. The next critical step is to forge creative collaborative links with practice settings, links that assure that requisite learning is reality-based and in step with the future of health care. This article outlines progress toward improving nursing competence in substance abuse and suggests reality-based learning strategies as a future direction for this important goal for nursing education. Two successful models of collaboration between education and practice, designed to augment basic curriculum and improve nursing knowledge, skills and attitudes related to substance abuse, are described.

Faculty development and curriculum change in substance abuse.

What approaches can be used to upgrade nursing education and clinical skills in alcohol and drug abuse? The authors discuss the development of faculty and curricula in three schools of nursing. The programs described are part of a national initiative to ensure that health care professionals have basic knowledge and clinical skills in screening, assessment, intervention, and the appropriate use of referral systems for clients with substance abuse problems.

Family Nurse Practitioner Clinical Competencies in Alcohol and Substance Use

&NA; The prevalence of substance use among patients presenting to primary health care settings mandates clinical competency in the area for nurse practitioners (NPs). An educational intervention with an evaluation component is described. The effect of incorporating substance use content into a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) curriculum was tested with a convenience sample of 16 FNP students and 8 practicing NPs. Students’ knowledge increased significantly; however, differences in students’ and practicing NPs’ knowledge did not reach significance. Students’ clinical competency increased significantly, as demonstrated by standardized patient clinical evaluations, and was significantly better than the practicing NPs in the skill domains of evaluation and record keeping. Educational intervention can improve NP identification of substance‐abusing patients in primary health care settings.

Nursing assessment in psychiatric home health care

There is an increasing need for home care nursing follow-up for patients with psychiatric diagnoses. Ongoing assessment is the basis on which the nurse plans interventions. This article presents concise, comprehensive information necessary to perform a psychiatric nursing assessment. The discussion divides the assessment into sections: the macrolevel assessment, which includes the community, home, and family responses; and the microlevel assessment, which includes the patients level of function, the psychosocial stressors, and the caregivers stressors.