Education: Respect for Nurses

“Confidence is generally described as a state of being certain either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Self confidence is having confidence in oneself.”  Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia.

I have been confident for many years that addiction and all it’s manifestations is a health condition. In hospitals, and where ever nurses are employed, withdrawal syndromes will be present. As a nurse, in the years that I worked in general hospitals, caring for individuals in any form of substance withdrawal left me feeling inadequate and vulnerable. This is one health condition that was not then taught in nursing schools. It is my understanding that nursing education in present day schools of nursing has advanced only slightly, but still with limited emphasis on the area of addictions nursing.  My own ideas, even to me, are grand and so very big, that I have difficulty hanging on to the confidence of my own beliefs.

That is, until I see the dramatic medical, mood and behavioural changes, that occur in hours to a few days. And also til I recall the actual brain dysfunction, and sometimes structural changes, that occur with substance abuse, within substance withdrawal and early sobriety. Substance abuse that has occurred over decades, sometimes beginning in developmental stages, or substance abuse that has not begun until late adulthood. So many more details that once more they threaten to overwhelm my self confidence. The threat is overwhelmed by my belief in the need for the education of nurses about nursing care that includes substance withdrawal management, health teaching about the physiological and emotional nature of addictions, recovery and relapse.

That we, as nurses, have our hands tied by the stigma surrounding addictions and mental health, is a very unfortunate part of our education and thus our experiences. Our experiences are at the bedside, in clinics, as street nurses, anywhere nurses are employed. If our nursing care is detered by this lack, then patient care and the outcome of that care is incomplete. As a detox nurse, I still care for the medical effects of substance induced brain trauma creating acute medical, neurological and psychiatric symptoms of my client’s in crisis.  

“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson