Summary of Interviews with Vulnerable Populations and Healthcare Professionals

Summary of Interviews with Vulnerable Populations and Healthcare Professionals

Summary of Interview with Professional

Dr. Jennifer D’Andrea, director of the Counseling Department at Wesleyan University, offered her valuable views on work with alcohol and substance abuse clients. Her client pool includes college students who experiment with drugs all the way through to those suffering from chronic alcoholism. Common challenges among her clients, said Dr. D’Andrea, include out-of-control use, relationship problems, academic or work impairment, and concurrent psychiatric issues such as depression and anxiety.

Regarding effective treatment strategies, Dr. D’Andrea stressed a multifaceted approach that would combine individual therapy and group support with medication-assisted treatment when required. She indicated family support as being very instrumental in the recovery process but also noted that most of her clients must work through damaged relationships with their loved ones. The interview also disclosed that mood disorders, PTSD, and different health issues resulting from long-term substance abuse are among the major co-occurring disorders with her clientele.

Dr. D’Andrea presented a sophisticated view of relapse as a normal part of recovery for most people—it is not a failure on their part. Her work with clients focuses on the identification of relapse triggers and building strategies to cope better. Outreach and education are done on campus by her department in an effort to decrease stigma. She also remarked on the importance of collaboration with medical providers, social workers, and local treatment facilities in providing holistic care. She pressed for greater integration between mental health and addiction services to help patients achieve better recoveries from their addictions.

Summary of Interview with Vulnerable Population Member

Winnie Cynthia, a recovered alcohol addict and a college student, shared her experience in battling addiction. She described how her addiction made a huge impact on her life: it affected her academic performance, relationships, and mental health. Winnie explained that at first, she started drinking heavily in an attempt to deal with stress and depression but would later realize that it made her problems worse over time. Her addiction strained family relationships and led to the loss of several friendships.

Winnie’s path to treatment was quite fraught and humiliating. She described difficulties getting on-campus treatment and feeling that there was a lack of resources available, coupled with confidentiality concerns. In her typical day, actively engaged in the addictive substance, Winnie skipped classes, drank alone in her dorm room, and tended to overlook basic self-care practices. She credited individual therapy and participation in a 12-step support group as the two most helpful facets of treatment in her recovery process.

This interview also disclosed that Winnie’s addiction caused weight gain, sleeping problems, and further frequent illnesses. Although she eluded legal problems, she explained several instances of narrowly missing conflicts with campus security. Heavier reliance for Winnie now comes through a sober support network and healthy coping skills to prevent relapse. She wished for more addiction-specific resources and sober social events to be available on campus. Despite all her battling, Winnie still had a very positive attitude toward her future and advised all those struggling with addiction to always seek help, above all else, to pluck up the courage to conquer their fears and stigmas.

Personal Significance of Interviews

These interviews impacted me greatly as a person. They gave me an even higher view on addiction beyond academic knowledge. Their stories—Dr. D’Andrea’s and Winnie’s—related convolutions of substance abuse and ubiquitous stigma at the base of barriers to help-seeking. Winnie’s openness enabled me to personalize the issue of addiction in a way I had never really thought about before, challenging my preconceptions and fostering much greater empathy.

These conversations helped me reflect on biases and assumptions against people with substance-use disorders. It drove home the message of looking at the person as a whole rather than just their addiction. Further, these interviews developed an even greater respect for the strength and resilience expressed by those in recovery, expanding my view on this vulnerable population.

Professional Significance of Interviews

These interviews offered numerous valuable insights from a professional nursing perspective. Most importantly, they emphasized the fact that trauma-informed, non-judgmental care needs to be delivered to patients with addictions. Dr. D’Andrea mentioned that nurses need to work in an integrated way with mental health providers, social workers, and other professionals in order to help solve the disease of addiction effectively.

Winnie’s story vividly illustrated how shame and fear of judgment can keep individuals from seeking timely treatment. It kept driving home what being a nurse is about: providing a safe environment where patients feel comfortable enough to open up. The interviews really hit a chord in me as a nurse regarding educating patients and families that addiction is a chronic disease that requires continuous management, not a moral failing.

These discussions helped to further expand my understanding of the social determinants that impact substance use and recovery. Housing stability, social support, and access to mental health were clear examples of major contributions to make toward recovery. This knowledge will inform my future nursing assessments and care planning for patients with issues of addiction, assuring they are treated and supported from a holistic approach.

Implications for Nursing

Several key areas where nursing can significantly impact the health of people experiencing alcohol and substance-use problems were identified from the interviews and supporting literature. Firstly, physiological health. Nurses can make many contributions to the performance of health assessments to identify and initiate treatment for physical complications arising from substance use (Flaubert et al., 2021). In particular, patients can benefit from education about harm reduction and safe substance use practices in addition to assistance with medication management for co-occurring illnesses and the addiction process.

In the domain of psychological health, nurses are better placed in screening for co-occurring disorders of mental health and referring them to appropriate treatment (Jenkins et al., 2022). Motivational interviewing techniques can be utilized to help in behavior change. Education on stress management and other healthful coping techniques facilitates long-term recovery. Socioculturally, nurses can facilitate patients’ access to community support groups and recovery resources; they can also provide advocacy related to reduced stigma, increased access policies to treatment, and culturally competent care that respects how cultural factors might influence substance use and recovery.

On the level of spiritual health, a nurse can screen for spiritual needs and implement spiritual coping strategies if so desired by the patient while showing respect for different belief systems and how these might impact views of addiction and treatment (Ernstmeyer & Christman, 2021; Harrad et al., 2019). Developmental health is attended to by individualizing interventions according to the patient’s stage in life and their cognitive capacity to understand it. It also addresses family dynamics and support systems, especially for younger patients.

This will ensure universal care and will require very close collaboration between nurses and interdisciplinary teams that include counselors, social workers, and physicians. Equally important is staying current with evidence-based approaches to the treatment of addiction and advocating that more education on addiction be included in nursing curricula. Harm reduction policies and increasing treatment-service access are relevant ways to promote this vulnerable population’s well-being.

It is within this broad array of needs that nurses can make significant contributions to the recovery process and promote health for patients with active substance use disorders. This approach could significantly enhance the quality of care offered to such people affected by substance abuse disorders through the integration of professional experience with personal insights into addiction.

References

Ernstmeyer, K., & Christman, E. (2021). Chapter 18 Spirituality. Www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov; Chippewa Valley Technical College. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK591821/

Flaubert, J. L., Menestrel, S. L., Williams, D. R., & Wakefield, M. K. (2021). Supporting the health and professional well-being of nurses. In www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. National Academies Press. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK573902/

Harrad, R., Cosentino, C., Keasley, R., & Sulla, F. (2019). Spiritual care in nursing: an overview of the measures used to assess spiritual care provision and related factors amongst nurses. Acta Bio-Medica: Atenei Parmensis, 90(4-S), 44–55. https://doi.org/10.23750/abm.v90i4-S.8300

Jenkins, E., Currie, L. M., Hirani, S., Garrod, E., Goodyear, T., McGuinness, L., David, A., & Bonnie, K. (2022). Enhancing nurses’ capacity to provide concurrent mental health and substance use disorder care: A quasi-experimental intervention study. Nurse Education Today, 117(117), 105483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2022.105483

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Review the Risk Factors and Talking Points Assignment that you completed during Workshop One. Review suggestions from your faculty related to the talking points listed.

Summary of Interviews with Vulnerable Populations and Healthcare Professionals

Review the PowerPoint Conducting Successful Interviews.pptx.
Interview a professional who works with a vulnerable population group that you are focusing on for this course.
Interview a member of the vulnerable population group that you are focusing on for this course. The professional you are interviewing may be able to identify an individual you can interview if you are unsure of whom to interview.
Search OCLS for articles related to the nursing care of this vulnerable population group.
Review the chapter(s) in Stanhope and Lancaster that relate to this population.
Write a four-page paper using APA format that addresses the following areas:
Summary of the interview with the professional
Summary of the interview with the member of the vulnerable population
The personal significance of these interviews—How have they affected you as a person?
Professional significance of these interviews—How have they affected you as a nurse?
Implications for nursing related to this population group—How can nursing impact the physiological, psychological, sociocultural, developmental, and/or spiritual health of this population?
A minimum of three scholarly resources to support nursing implications related to care for this population.