Substance Abuse Counselor

Substance abuse among nurses is difficult to gauge since not all doctor’s offices and hospitals require regular drug screening.

There are, however, nurses who get caught taking medications that should have gone to patients. While there doesn’t appear to be a wide spread epidemic, there are certainly nurses who abuse substances and endanger not only themselves and other hospital staff, but patients.

* Nurses are surrounded by powerful drugs each and every day.

It is probably not being at the hospital which causes an addiction, although it very well may be, but the drugs are easily available to all nurses. The American Nurses Association says that up to 20% of nurses may be addicted to drugs. Most often, the addiction is caught when after a number of shifts, a higher than normal amount of patients complain of insufficient pain relief even though their charts say they have been given the medication. There have been patients who have died because the doctor, treating it symptomatically, orders a higher dose of pain medication. The doctor isn’t at fault, or the nurse who deals with the patients in pain. The problem lies with an addiction where the addict, a nurse, has such easy access to his or her drug of choice.

A study done in 1998 showed that marijuana use among emergency room nurses was significantly higher, as was alcohol abuse. Emergency room nurses also had a higher change of being cocaine abusers or addicts. Oncology nurses had the highest percentage of substance abuse over all, including alcoholism. The numbers may seem shocking, but when considering the overall increase in addiction in the general population, it really just makes sense that the numbers would go up for every profession.

* The problem with addiction and substance abuse among nurses is that people die under their care.

That is not what they intend to happen, but it does. Patients are given the wrong medication (to substitute for the drug taken by the nurse) or are given no medication at all. Granted, nursing is a very stressful occupation but harming a patient should not be an accepted practice at all.

There are always excuses for drug abuse. “My job is too stressful” or “My kids are brats” or any number of other excuses. The problem is that these nurses need to be discovered and they need to get themselves free of their drug abuse or addiction. There should be stricter drug screening standards throughout every medical facility.