Nurses substance use and resilience patterns

Abstract

Abstract Background and Aims: Some nurses may turn to non-adaptive behaviors including patterns of substance use during their daily pressured routines and in crisis times. This study aimed to assess nurses’ substance use and resilience patterns during the past three months. Design and Analysis: Descriptive data was collected from nurses using convenient sampling from public, educational and private sector hospitals. Chi-square analysis was used to test the association between substance use and nurses’ gender and type of health care sector. Student t-test examined the impact of resilience level on substance use. Setting: Amman-Jordan. Participants: 1000 hospital based nurses. Measurements: The outcome variable was substance use differentiated by category. Related variables such as gender, age, type of hospital and other socio-demographic variables were assessed by self-reported questionnaire. Resilience as an independent variable was measured by Connor-Davidson resilience Scale (10-items) (1). Findings: The highest prevalence of substance use among nurses was found in caffeinated drinks followed by smoking then hypnotics and the lowest prevalence was for cocaine. Significant associations were found between substance use and gender in favor of males in smoking ( p< .001), alcohol use, cannabis and hypnotics. Significant association was found between nurses in private hospitals and substance use over their partners in educational and public hospitals, in favor of alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, stimulants, inhaled substances, hypnotics, hallucinating agents and opioids. Significant differences in resilience score between users and none-users were found in alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, stimulants, hypnotics, hallucinating agents and opioids. Non-users scored higher in resilience mean scores for all substance types. Conclusions: Traumatic psychological experiences, work and life pressures induce some protective mechanisms to help nurses endure emotional pain. Some of those mechanisms include patterns of smoking, alcohol and other forms of substance use. Remarkably, nurses who use substances show less resilient patterns.