repsonse to peer belowMy area of practice is the Emergency Department (ED), and while

repsonse to peer below
My area of practice is the Emergency Department (ED), and while conducting my article search, I wanted to review an article relating to a practice problem that can be translated into a practice intervention in the ED.  The practice problem of addiction seemed most appropriate, and for this reason, I began my search for addiction-related articles in the ED. To my surprise, the amount of literature about addiction specific to the ED setting was very sparse.  The study that I chose sought to understand the extent to which prescriptions given at discharge to patients in the ED contributed to the misuse and diversion of opioid pain relievers. This was a systematic review of the literature. The researchers identified seven peer-reviewed studies that contributed to this specific body of literature. Four of the seven studies were retrospective reviews with sample sizes ranging from 186 to 400,288. Two of the studies were Qualitative interviews and one was a quantitative study that collected data from a sample of 85 patients.
The findings identified that the emergency department is a specific contributor to opioid misuse and diversion accounting for 10% of diverted opioid pain relievers (Lyapustina et al., 2017). The researchers identified that a majority of the existing quantitative data on the subject of opioid misuse and diversion did not consistently capture the settings or prescribers of opioid pain relievers, and therefore a limiting factor to this study.  The researchers identified a gap in the literature relating to the ED and interventions aimed at reducing opioid misuse and diversion.
The implications for practice for the DNP-prepared nurse are that there exists an opportunity to intervene with education for patients discharged from the ED with opioid prescriptions for pain management. This education should include information on misuse and diversion, and alternative pain management techniques and methods. With any intervention, there is a need for research evaluating interventions aimed at mitigating the misuse and diversion of opioids.