Addicted women. Profiles from the inner city

Abstract

This article has focused on addicted women and the contexts in which they present to the community nurse. An effort has been made to broaden the clinical applications to include the societal problems underlying addiction and the policy issues that must be addressed to solve them. Addicted women can be described from a societal dimension, in which the health care system reflects disarray and fiscal chaos, and from a community dimension. The two dimensions link the public and the private spheres. To evaluate addicted women and the options for their recovery more effectively, it is helpful to integrate the societal and personal milieu--public issues and the private lives that illustrate them. This is how policy is best formulated. The numbers of addicted women in the health care system reflect only the tip of the iceberg. Health care providers must strive to reach women who are outside of the health care system who have not been connected to a hospital, shelter, or home care agency. Researchers need to differentiate sample patient populations, and the patient selection bias needs to be addressed early on. A model of a community support for recovery located within a housing project was a viable option for reaching addicted women. The role of nurses is becoming increasingly unique. Nurses are skilled as caregivers and clinicians. They can open doors of opportunity for inner-city women and children by developing health-promotive programs in hospital settings for substance abusing women and by continuing to work with their colleagues in the community context. On both dimensions, nurses have front-line accessibility to women and children who are vulnerable. Often, commonality of gender strengthens the nurse/patient relationship and facilitates trust as well as empathy between female addicts and their nurse advocate counterparts. Never has the call to inner-city nurses been more compelling. The problems related to drug abuse and parenting are multidimensional. They resist easy definition and solution. Nurses have the education and the clinical expertise to provide front-line interventions for inner-city women who are addicted to drugs. Nurses are educated holistically as caregivers and teachers. Ideally, nurses can exert their strongest impact on health promotion in the neighborhoods of communities. In reality, this has not worked, and nurses remain part of a health care system that has failed inner-city poor women and their children. Nurses in hospitals and in community setting spend most of their time applying "bandages" to the psychologic and physical wounds that emerge from the addiction to drugs.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)