SLU Nursing Professor, Colleagues Teach Students Self-Care, Safe Drinking Choices
07/01/2020
For Allison Brauch, DNP, and the faculty of Saint Louis University’s Trudy Busch Valentine School of Nursing, teaching and supporting students goes beyond the classroom with "Well-Being in the Lobby" sessions that focus promoting making safe choices, including choices about drinking and alcohol consumption.
Brauch and colleagues organized a spring "Well-Being in the Lobby" session promoting alcohol awareness.
"I think that college students are not fully aware of the dangers that harmful drinking can have," Brauch, assistant professor of nursing, said. "Not only does risky or harmful drinking affecting their academic performance, but also their personal well-being; both in the short term and on longer-term effects."
The Well-Being in the Lobby sessions were begun in response to the increasing number of students presenting to the school’s faculty with mental health and wellness concerns. The sessions are walk-throughs aimed at addressing common psychological and emotional challenges nursing students may encounter as health care professionals and in their collegiate lives, Brauch said.
The 90-minute sessions have included nutrition, stress reduction, substance use and body awareness, with sessions held monthly so students can participate going to or from class, or when they have down time.
"By providing these sessions to students in a familiar space with trusted faculty, it is our hope that we can begin to successfully address some of the challenges our students are facing,” Brauch said. “Generally, those who turn to alcohol do so because they are in pain from former or current trauma. What better avenue to contribute to the greater good than by helping those in pain and distress and showing students how to care for themselves and others?"
The March session Brauch helped organize, "Lift Your Spirits: Positive Approaches to Prevent Alcohol Mis-Use and Dis-Ease," drew from her work in psychiatric mental health settings. Brauch is a certified nurse practitioner in psychiatric mental health and adult gerontology primary care, seeing patients age 13 and up. Certified as a CARN-AP (certified addiction registered nurse-advanced practice), she currently practices in psychiatry.
Brauch is involved with a professional organization called the International Nurses Society on Addictions which was formerly the National Nurses Society on Alcoholism, the nursing counterpart to the American Medical Society on Alcoholism. The organization’s mission is “to advance excellence in nursing care for the prevention and treatment of addictions for diverse populations across all practice settings through advocacy, collaboration, education, research and policy development.”
She also sits on board for the Addictions Nursing Certification Board (ANCB) which is a credentialed nursing specialization under the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). The board credentials nurses and advanced practice nurses in the United States and Canada and aims to increase the nursing workforce to be better equipped to manage addiction including alcohol use disorders as well as maintain current and exceptional care in this field.
"I have worked in various aspects of nursing from primary care to high risk antepartum to psychiatry and more specifically, addiction," Brauch explained. "We see how alcohol impacts patients in every facet of nursing. This does not solely fit into one nursing role. Nurses see this in every single nursing role they will work in. They may also see at risk behaviors in themselves or their nursing colleagues."
In Allison’s Words
I am fortunate to be a professor and incorporate much of this curriculum into our courses. I am also fortunate to be able to be on the frontline as a nurse practitioner and managing patient care. Being involved in organizations involved with addiction nursing enables me to hopefully make a broader impact beyond the students at SLU and the patients I care for.
As I have worked in many aspects of nursing, addiction and alcohol use disorders were a very small portion of my didactic training. Once I became a nurse and nurse practitioner, I realized that I was not as well equipped as I could have been. There are many initiatives both at universities and through professional organizations and fellowship opportunities to change this.
We are teaching our students self-care. This is especially important in fields such as nursing that can experience secondary trauma from caring for their patients. Secondary trauma can lead to compassion fatigue.
Based on the nurses' ability to be resilient through methods of self-care, their professional quality of life can either be one of compassion satisfaction where they feel their jobs are rewarding, or compassion fatigue from secondary trauma and burnout.
Often when nurses feel burnout and dissatisfaction with work, they will use alcohol to self-medicate. In fact, nurses are at a higher risk of drug or alcohol use. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), up to 10% of the RN nursing workforce may be dependent on drugs or alcohol. This is not surprising considering the pressure that is accompanied by caring for one's life, insufficient workload, and 12-hours shifts that may include nights, weekends and holidays.
We are teaching our students self-care. This is especially important in fields such as nursing that can experience secondary trauma from caring for their patients. Secondary trauma can lead to compassion fatigue."
Allison Brauch, DNP
I am involved with an organization called "Alive and Well" which is a trauma awareness training that focuses on awareness of trauma, types of trauma including secondary trauma which is commonplace in nurse and self-care. A former colleague of mine and I delivered this training to students at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL), where I previously taught, to undergraduate general studies, doctoral nursing students and university employees.
We are hoping to bring this to SLU and better equip our community to be more trauma informed, practice self-care and hopefully minimize reliance on alcohol to self-medicate trauma.
Unfortunately, harmful or risky drinking has been a cultural norm that is often accompanied by peer pressure to binge drink in college. This does not necessarily have to be the case.
We wanted to let students know that there are many other ways to celebrate, socialize and relieve stress.
Our students are under a lot of stress and pressure. We need to be able to be a light and a resource for them.
Alcohol and substance use disorders are incorporated into the curriculum for nursing and more specifically, in the psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner program. The focus is primarily on secondary prevention (screening), diagnosing and treating this disorder. We wanted to target our student population by providing positive and practical methods to prevent risky drinking in our college student population from becoming harmful use and possibly a disorder.
It is one thing to learn didactic curriculum, it is another to provide practical "real world" strategies to apply that support the background knowledge. Students need "real world" practical strategies. This includes things they can say to their friends to decline invitations to "party" as well as positive coping strategies and other means of socializing that does not revolve around alcohol.
We need to look "outside of the box" and focus on the student as a whole person and get creative and innovative in our teaching methods in order to engage them!
I am thrilled to be a part of a Jesuit university. The mission and values align with my purpose and values. God has done amazing things in my life and I believe has led me to this for a purpose.
The nursing model takes a holistic approach which aligns with the Jesuit mission of treating the whole person – mind, body and spirit. It also encourages students to become well-rounded people who contribute the greater good.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated 2020 as the “Year of the Nurse and Nurse Midwives,” in order to highlight the need for increased numbers of nurses and midwives worldwide. As part of the year’s celebrations, and to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of famed nursing advocate Florence Nightingale, the University is telling the stories of SLU nurses who impact communities on and beyond campus through their teaching, outreach and research in a limited special series.
Story by Amelia Flood, University Marketing and Communications