Impaired Nursing Practice

The impaired nursing practice has been one of the critical issues in the nursing field. Due to the easy access to drugs of various types and strengths, often times highly addictive drugs, the impaired nurse is being a huge issue these days. There are many reasons that could lead to the impaired nurses, among them, working long hours in high stress environment could be the one. This paper will explore the impaired nursing practice, the purpose of choosing to discuss about the impaired nurse, current relevance to the impaired nurse practice, how the impaired nurse integrated into clinical practice, how the information is used in clinical setting, and closing thoughts of the impaired nurse.
The Impaired Nursing Practice There could be various
types of definition for impaired nurse, however, most include that the professional judgment is impaired due to the use of drugs or alcohol or maybe mental illness, which compromise the patient safety (Huston, 2016). The impaired nursing practice brings two main concerns one is patient safety and another one is the health of the impaired nurse (Huston, 2016). Therefore, the impaired nursing practice is considered a huge issue in the medical field. Similarly, due to denial of the impaired nurse, the problems could go many years without detecting or treating (Huston, 2017). Nurses feel shame and guilt when they discovered that they have a problem of substance abuse because they feel they are caregivers and they are not walking in the right direction themselves (Easler et al., 2016). Therefore, they try to hide their problems as much as they can. It is very important to know the signs and symptoms of the impaired nurse, such as increased treatment errors, rapid mood swings, poor personal hygiene, slurred speech, unsteady gait, narcotic supply discrepancies, flushed face, patient complaints of not receiving pain medications, red eyes, reports of excessive numbers of broken vials, reports of excessive amounts of wasted narcotics, etc. There are many reasons that can make a nurse impaired or incapable to work effectively, such as increased workloads, decreased staffing, double shifts/mandatory overtime, floating to unfamiliar units, fatigue, isolation, personal or family problems, mental illness, etc. Due to those varieties of reasons, the impaired nurses are unable to perform their professional duties and responsibilities in a sensible manner (Worley, 2017). However, whatever the reasons behind the nurses’ impairment, it is very essential to take this issue seriously because they are responsible for the lives and health of others, to whom they provide close care. If the nurses are not responsible or not in a good condition while they are providing care to the patients, that could affect their patients, themselves, and the hospital management as well. Due to the medical personnel's access to and knowledge of prescription drugs, it is being difficult to detect drug theft, but it also poses massive risks for them and for patients as well (Budryk, 2014).
There are many examples that show both the impaired nurses and the patients are extremely affected by the impaired nurse practices. One example is that in 2009, by injecting himself with patients' pain medicine and refilling the syringes with saline, a hospital technician infected at least 46 patients with hepatitis (Budryk, 2014). It was the third hepatitis outburst due to the worker use of patient syringes, the other two were happened in Denver and Jacksonville, Fla., therefore, according to federal records, hundreds of healthcare workers were disciplined or prosecuted for drug diversion or similar misconduct (Budryk, 2014). Therefore, early detection of the problems and effective treatments are vital for the substance misuse and addiction, in order to restore the quality of the life of the impaired nurse and provide safety to the patients (Huston, 2017). Substance misuse and addiction are diseases that can cost lives, if the intervention and treatment were delayed, while they can be treated successfully by recognizing early and treating aggressively. However, “Over 95% of self-identified impaired nurses were currently employed and unknown to their employers as having a substance use problem” (Huston, 2016, p. 295). This information shows that the impaired nurses put the patients and themselves at risk by continuing the critical nature of substance use
disorder. Moreover, studies have shown that the colleagues of the impaired nurses are not comfortable in confronting or reporting about the suspected impaired colleague (Huston, 2016). This barriers could be due to the lack of general knowledge of substance abuse in the workplace, lack of compassion in the workplace for peers, and lack of a clear protocol or process for reporting or intervening (Huston, 2016). Likewise, sometimes, nurses do not want to put their peers’ profession in danger, so they avoid the situation instead of reporting the impairment of their peers. Moreover, some might think the word confrontation itself is a barrier, so using a word, such as assisting a nurse, addressing a problem, etc. would help people to report an impaired colleague (Huston, 2016).