Educational Intervention About the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) for Healthcare Workers

Abstract

Purpose: Increase knowledge, improve attitude, and assess intent to use the ASI in nurses and technicians by implementing an educational intervention on the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) and adult dual diagnosis at Hoag Hospital Emergency Department in Newport Beach, California. Background: Mental health illness and substance use disorders (SUDs) are incredibly common both worldwide and locally. A screening tool called the ASI is vastly underutilized in today’s practice to better assess for dual diagnosis among patients experiencing either a mental health disorder or SUDs. Methods: This was a quality improvement (QI) project. Participants included fourteen nurses and technicians, 11 nurses, and three technicians. The design was a pre-survey, followed by an educational PowerPoint presentation with a post-survey to follow. The pre-survey and post-survey utilized Google Forms, and the PowerPoint was done on Google Slides. The educational PowerPoint was comprised of information on mental health, substance use, dual diagnosis, and ASI. Both surveys and the educational intervention were delivered via email, and participants responded anonymously. Results: Twenty-five participants initially completed the pre-survey, and only 14 completed the entire intervention. Therefore, 11 participant responses were excluded from the data analysis. Though statistical data analysis illustrated that not all questions were proved to be statistically significant, all questions netted an increase in knowledge, improved attitude, and intent to use the ASI among individual participants. Conclusion: The results of the intervention did have an impact on an individual level but cannot quite be generalized to the greater population due to the small sample size. However, this project does inform the site that future research and projects along these same lines should be implemented to assess staff regarding this specific patient population better due to the positive results.