Barriers to providing quality care for patients with substance use disorders from the perspective of baccalaureate nursing students: A descriptive qualitative study

Background: With Iran facing an epidemic in substance use disorders, nursing students are increasingly encountering people impacted by substance misuse. Providing care for this group brings with it many barriers and challenges. These serious barriers have not been a priority in Iranian nurse education. Objectives: To describe barriers to providing quality care for people with substance use disorders from the perspective of nursing students. Design: A descriptive qualitative study, using content analysis was used to address the study aim. Setting and participants: Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants. Participants were 34 baccalaureate nursing students from different academic semesters studying at two medical sciences universities in Iran. Methods: Data were collected using semi-structured interviews from July 2022 to October 2022. Granheim & Lundman's method for qualitative content analysis was used to analyze data. Results: The barriers to providing quality care for people with substance use disorders were described through the major theme: "lack of communication skills and difficulty finding language for therapeutic communication with people with substance use disorders". Based on nursing student perspectives, a lack of communication and language for therapeutic communication was described through the three barriers of: 1. "possessing or witnessing prejudiced attitudes and stereotypes", 2 "negative role models", and 3. "Knowledge deficit in self or others". Conclusion: The result of this study showed that nursing students interact with people with substance use disorders through prejudiced attitudes, negative stereotypes, and knowledge deficits. Academic education should include practical techniques to reduce negative stereotypes and moral distress among nursing students as well as strategies to manage tough ethical situations and decrease prejudiced attitudes. Nurses and clinical educators must be attentive to their power to influence nursing students and should model appropriate unbiased behavior and language.