Competencies for nursing care of patients with substance related disorders

Abstract

Nurses and midwives, the largest group of providers, deliver basic and specialty healthcare worldwide. They are uniquely positioned to deliver interventions for drug use, abuse and dependence. Few provide such care however, because their basic educations lacked information and clinical teaching on drug use, treatment of addictions and health. This paper identifies nursing competencies, and gives suggestions for strategies for their development. Competencies development for nurse generalists and nurse specialists should be based on current nursing and other scientific evidence from research studies, consensus statements and practice guidelines. Exemplars of evidence based interventions are described. For purposes of this paper, alcohol is identified as such; drugs refers to nicotine, illegal and prescription drugs.