Exploring Substance Use Disorder Nursing Competency in the Italian Context

Abstract

Background: In Italy, the majority of people treated in Addiction Treatment Service are heroin users. Nurses represent a strategic position in the multiprofessional and multidisciplinary Addiction Treatment Service team.

Aims: To describe the addiction nurses' competency in the Italian context.

Method: This research uses the qualitative approach to describes the addiction nurses' competency. The research was divided into two steps: ethnographic, to identify activities, habits, settings, critical issues and other distinctive features characterizing addiction nursing specific competencies, and a subsequent phenomenological semistructured interview to understand the lived and the meanings of the experience.

Results: The meaning units identified could be organized as follows: ability to manage unexpected events, work organization, and teamwork relationships, professional responsibility.

Conclusions: Many of these described competencies, if considered in general terms, relate to any area of the profession. It is possible to understand their specificity by investigating the meanings and the values attributed to the personal experience This study attempts to develop and define an Italian addiction nursing competency framework.

Keywords: psychiatric nursing practice; qualitative research; substance abuse.