Attitudes of nurses toward alcohol dependent patients

Alcoholism is known to be one of the most prevalent of the addictions. Nurses encounter alcohol-dependent patients in all segments of the health care delivery system. This study explored the relationship between the education of nurses in the biogenetic disease concept of addiction and the attitudes of nurses toward alcohol-dependent patients. The purpose of this study was to determine if there are differences in attitudes toward alcohol-dependent patients between nurses who have studied the biogenetic disease concept of addiction and those who have not.

The study design was descriptive and nonexperimental. A total of 150 randomly selected nurses were invited to participate. The sample consisted of 40 volunteer registered nurses from the group invited who represented 12 specialty areas in the hospital. Twenty-eight of these nurses had knowledge of the biogenetic disease process and 12 did not have this knowledge. The subjects completed a demographic data sheet and the five subscales of the Seaman-Mane 1lo Scale, Form B - Nurses' Attitudes Toward Alcohol and Alcoholism. Descriptive statistics were obtained. The data were analyzed using a t-test to test for attitude differences. A one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test for differences in mean attitudes across the five subscales by age, alcohol abuse education, professional contacts, and personal contact (p = 0.05).

The findings of this study revealed significant differences between the two groups of nurses only in attitudes relating to the nurses' professional satisfaction in work with alcoholics and nurses' knowledge of the disease concept of addiction. These findings imply that nurses should be made aware of the exciting new insights into the etiology and treatment of alcoholism. Nurse educators should teach practicing nurses and student nurses the new concepts. Individual nurses may gain satisfaction and increase personal benefit from their practice by seeking out the latest knowledge about alcoholism. Based on these findings, studies should be conducted with a larger sample where more evidence of differences may appear.