NURS350 Research In Nursing Homework Assignment

NURS350 Research In Nursing Homework Assignment

Addiction in Nursing

Thalia Fuster

West Coast University

NURS350 Research in Nursing

Professor Sara Turpel

November 13th, 2021

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Addiction in Nursing

Addiction is a significant health problem with many health implications and ripple effects. Many addicts are usually associated with other health issues, including but not limited to mental health conditions, cancer, stroke, heart disease, or lung disease (Liu & Li, 2018). The long-term effects of drug use on the body can have damaging results. For instance, smoke from tobacco can potentially cause multiple cancers, deaths from opioid overdose are rampant, methamphetamine causes serious dental issues, drug inhalants can destroy nerve cells in the central or peripheral nervous system. Drug addiction also increases the risk factor for contracting sexually transmitted infections.

Drug addiction can also lead to other infections caused by the sharing of paraphernalia among drug addicts. Mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety may be made worse by drug addiction if they existed prior to drug abuse or triggered by an addiction problem (Liu & Li, 2018). Other secondary ripple effects of drug addiction include motor vehicle accidents, the spread of infectious diseases, effects of second-hand smoking, developmental problems among drug-exposed children during pregnancy.

Significance of Addiction to Nursing Practice

Likelihood of Nurses Developing Addiction

Drug abuse and addiction can affect anyone regardless of their gender, age, race, or profession. Medical professionals such as nurses are also not spared when it comes to addiction. Nurses can develop a dependence and full addiction to alcohol or drugs (Finnell et al., 2019). If a nurse develops an addiction problem, it can lead to devastating consequences. While the nurses struggling with the addiction place themselves at risk from all the effects of drug addiction, they also place their patients at risk of compromised reckless care. When a nurse is suffering from addiction the care, they offer patients is not based on their best decisions.

Nurses’ Access to Controlled Substances and Addiction

The percentage of nurses struggling with substance abuse is the same as that in the general population, at about 8%. While nurses are not more at risk of developing addictions than other professionals in other fields, they have easier access to controlled substances (Finnell et al., 2019). The access they have to these controlled substances makes it easier for them to feed their addictions. It means that a nurse with an addiction problem can realize a faster escalation of their addiction than other professionals. Nurses can also abuse their access to controlled substances to conceal better their addiction problems (Buneviciene & Bunevicius, 2021). Lastly, a nurse struggling with an addiction problem can also contribute to the addiction problem of a friend or a loved one by providing them with controlled substances to abuse.

Causes of Addiction in Nurses

Several factors can lead to substance abuse and eventual addiction in a nurse. The most common one is the stress that comes with the job (Kakemam et al., 2019). Nurses sometimes work long shifts and are confronted with challenging cases. A nurse losing a patient can be traumatizing, especially for new nurses. Some of the job demands also limit nurses’ time with their loved ones, which could lead to relationship or family issues, leaving them estranged from their loved ones. All these are factors that could lead a nurse to find a way of taking the edge off to maintain their sanity, and that is how drug abuse may start. A nurse may also be handling the stress well until they suffer some injury that requires constant medication such as painkillers. With the risk of addiction that some of the medications have, a nurse may use the drug beyond their recovery leading to an addiction.

PICOT Questions

1. Among nurses, how does the likelihood for drug addiction compare to the likelihood of drug addiction in other professions over one year?

2. In nurse addicts who have access to controlled substances, how does their access to controlled substances compared to nurses who do not have similar access influence their drug addiction over one year?

3. Among nurses, how does stress as a factor, compared to people who belong to other professions, influence their likelihood to develop an addiction?

References

Buneviciene, I., & Bunevicius, A. (2021). Prevalence of internet addiction in healthcare

professionals: Systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 67(5), 483-491.

Finnell, D. S., Tierney, M., & Mitchell, A. M. (2019). Nursing: Addressing substance use in the 21st

century. Substance abuse, 40(4), 412-420.

Kakemam, E., Raeissi, P., Raoofi, S., Soltani, A., Sokhanvar, M., Visentin, D. C., & Cleary, M.

(2019). Occupational stress and associated risk factors among nurses: a cross-sectional study. Contemporary Nurse, 55(2-3), 237-249.

Liu, J. F., & Li, J. X. (2018). Drug addiction: a curable mental disorder? Acta Pharmacologica

Sinica, 39(12), 1823-1829.

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