PNR 183: The Impaired Nurse Substance Use Disorder (SUD) is an unfortunate occurrence in the nursing profession. The purpose of this paper is to explore SUD including the incidence, characteristics of...

Running Head: THE IMPAIRED NURSE                            1
THE IMPAIRED NURSE        2
THE IMPAIRED NURSE
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
Signs as well as Symptoms of Drugs and Alcohol Impaired Nurse    3
Incidence of Substance Abuse Disorder in Health Care Today    4
Impact of Impaired Nurse on Patient Care and Health Care Environment    5
Importance of SC Recovering Professional Program (SC RPP)    5
Summary of an External Article of Nurse with Substance Use Disorder    6
Conclusion    6
References    7
Introduction
Healthcare is considered as a sacred profession and there are certain aspects that justify this belief. Trust and dependency upon the healthcare workers is one them. Further, nurses are an essential part of the healthcare team because they form the major ground network of care and hospitality. However, there have been increased cases of faulty treatment and care and nurse impairment emerged as a major issue. Chemical dependency such as drugs and alcohol addiction may be considered as unbelievable, yet, it exists and there have been more than 40,000 nurses identified within U.S that were addicted to alcohol. This article focuses upon the issue of nurse impairment and efforts will be made to reflect the importance of recovery programs.
Signs as well as Symptoms of Drugs and Alcohol Impaired Nurse
It would be essential to consider that the impact of drugs or alcohol dependence upon nurses would be similar to that of a normal human being however; there can be certain characteristic signs and symptoms that can easily reflect the chemical dependency among nurses. Physically dependent nurse would show frequent mood swings, tiredness, frequent absence from work, underperformance, frequent and unpredictable accident cases, personify change and much more. Considering the impact from nursing profession, there can be some characteristic signs that can easily odd out the impaired nurse.
These would include the refusal towards drug testing, more time consumption even for causal tasks, confusion and memory loss (Toney-Butler & Siela, 2019). Likewise, an impaired nurse may report more drug usage for cases to other fellow nurses, heavy drug wastage reports, consistent possession of syringes and drugs in pockets and much more. Some other indirect signs can be patients reporting pain even after anesthesia treatment, inappropriate drug choices and usage for patients, missing medication, frequent reports of broken vials and much...