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“I thought I had empathy… but now I believe it was pity” : enhancing knowledge, empathy and harm reduction approaches among nurses working in concurrent disorder care

University of British Columbia

Concurrent disorders (CD) are highly prevalent and patients with CD have high healthcare utilization, experience unmet needs, and have poorer health outcomes than their non-CD counterparts. Nurses caring for this population report a number of challenges including lack of educational preparation and have been found to have sub-optimal attitudes towards patients with CD. There are substantial system and care gaps and a clear need exists for interventions to improve outcomes, particularly within inpatient mental health settings. A scoping review was conducted to identify how nurses – as the largest health care provider group with relevant expertise – could be better leveraged to improve care and enhance outcomes for mental health inpatients with CD. Themes across the literature were identified with a notable focus on education; higher levels of education were shown to improve attitudes and practices. Building on the literature and identified knowledge gaps, a one-day educational intervention was developed by a team of researchers, nurses and patient partners and offered to nurses working in inpatient mental health settings and nursing students in their mental health rotation at two local universities. The research question guiding this study was: What is the impact of a one-day educational intervention on nurses’ 1) knowledge about assessment and management of patients with CD, 2) empathy towards patients with CD and 3) knowledge and attitudes about harm reduction? Pre- and post-intervention surveys were administered to measure the impact of the education, which included open ended questions. Nurses’ and nursing students’ post-intervention scores showed a significant change in knowledge, attitudes and empathy. Interpretive integration was used to examine qualitative responses; this emphasized the resonance of the information that was shared and how it shifted attitudes and empowered the participants with enhanced knowledge. Given the substantial evidence that education improves nurses’ knowledge, attitudes and empathy, organizations and nursing schools ought to focus efforts and resources on CD education. Nurses are responsive to education and well-positioned to improve care of patients with CD.  

Text

2022-08-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/73232

Nursing

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/