Article Title
Abstract
Emergency Department (ED) Registered Nurses (RNs) spend significant time treating chronic pain patients. Chronic pain affects up to 100 million Americans (Simon, 2012) and as much as 30% of all opioid pain medications in the United States (US) are prescribed from EDs (Todd, Cowan, Kelly, & Homel, 2010). Abuse of these prescription drugs is America’s fastest growing drug problem (Paulozzi, Jones, Mack, & Rudd, 2011). For veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND), chronic non-cancer pain is the most frequent diagnosis (Higgins et al., 2014), and it is closely associated addiction disease.
RNs often use the stigmatizing label “drug-seeking” for certain key patient behaviors and may lack confidence to constructively intervene with these patients (McCaffery, Grimm, Pasero, Ferrell, & Uman, 2005). Screening Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) is a successful evidence-based, non-stigmatizing approach for managing patients with substance abuse issues (Agerwala & McCance-Katz, 2012) that can be conducted by nurses (Finnell, 2012).
In this commentary article, we advocate for RN-led SBIRT in both veteran and civilian EDs. Based on results of our SBIRT-readiness survey of ED nurses at one large urban Northern California ED, we found the need for increased RN training on addiction disease with 61% of nurses admitting to using stigmatizing terminology towards these patients, and 53.1% percent stating they given repeat chronic pain patients lower priority.
Recommended Citation
Moore, Dorothy J. and Dutra, Danette K.
(2015)
"Commentary: Are Emergency Nurses SBIRT-Ready to Assist Vets and other Chronic Non-Cancer Pain Patients?,"
DNP Forum: Vol. 1:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://fisherpub.sjf.edu/dnpforum/vol1/iss1/4