The Educational Impact of a Course About Addiction

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a nursing course about addiction on baccalaureate nursing students' attitudes toward addictive substances and on their personal lifestyle behaviors. The course was a three-credit, 15-week offering, focusing on: 1) learning to care for addictive clients, and 2) learning to value responsible attitudes and healthy lifestyle behaviors, as a strategy for primary prevention of addiction in the nursing profession. A non-random treatment group of 46 students enrolled in the course was compared with a control group of 36 students. Data were collected at the beginning and end of the term using Goodstadt's Drug Attitudes Scale and the Healthstyle Self-Test, and analyzed using a two-way analysis of variance with repeated measures over time. The treatment group made significantly greater changes than did the control group when measured by the tobacco subscale and the opiates subscale. Both groups showed a significantly decreased ability to manage stress at the end of the term. In addition, a subgroup of students who indicated a family background of drug or alcohol abuse reported significantly different lifestyle behaviors when compared with a subgroup of students whose families did not use drugs or alcohol.