Educating Providers to Use CRAFFT Screening in Adolescents

Abstract

This quality improvement project aimed to provide an education program for Denova Collaborative Health South Mountain Clinic health providers to increase their intent to utilize the CRAFFT screening tool. This project aimed to fill the educational gap of Denova Collaborative Health South Mountain clinic's primary health providers to conduct regular substance abuse CRAFFT screening for adolescents by educating them on the importance of regular substance abuse screening. The quality improvement project adopted a descriptive research design. In this quality improvement project, emails were sent by the DNP student to the psychiatric team consisting of 33 nurse practitioners (NPs), 13 physician assistants (Pas), and four medical doctors (MDs) at Denova Collaborative Health South Mountain Clinic, where they were invited to participate in the quality improvement project. However, only nine volunteered in the pretest, and six in the posttest used six key primary participants who took the pretest and posttest surveys. The scores from the posttest and pretest were compared using descriptive statistics to evaluate intent and knowledge, and Excel software will be used to manage the data. Then, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to determine if there was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores for both intent and knowledge. The quality improvement project examined the impact of an educational intervention on healthcare providers’ use of the CRAFFT screening tool for adolescent substance abuse. Before the intervention, providers had limited awareness and experience with the tool. The intervention led to increased knowledge and confidence in using CRAFFT, with a preference for the computerized version. Participants were more likely to provide privacy for screening and engage in conversations with adolescents about substance use. The intervention also enhanced familiarity with the 5Rs of brief counseling. While there were positive changes, the quality improvement project’s small sample size and lack of a control group suggest the need for further research to validate these findings.