Background and objective: A dramatic increase in the misuse of opioids has elevated Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) to a national health crisis. Healthcare providers must be confident and knowledgeable to provide care for patients with OUD. The current study measured the effectiveness of OUD education for Baccalaureate (BSN) nursing students.
Methods: Seventy-six (76) students participated. Instruments measured demographic characteristics, knowledge of OUD, and confidence and attitudes when providing care for OUD clients.
Results: There was a significant increase in OUD knowledge and improvement in confidence and attitudes toward OUD clients from baseline to two weeks.
Conclusions: Results support that a hands-on OUD educational session can increase OUD knowledge, improve attitudes toward treating OUD clients, and increase confidence in nursing students when caring for OUD clients.

Engaging stakeholders in healthcare policy is crucial, and nurses play a vital role in the development and advancement of healthcare policy. Addressing the challenge by the Institute of Medicine to engage nurses as leaders in health policy, we describe our successful use of a nurse-led health policy summit to communicate and inform voters, while specifically engaging participants in a dialogue on telehealth. The 2024 program received favorable evaluation ratings for the live event.

Background and purpose: Nursing curricula rarely include formal education on dementia-specific bathing competencies. However, bathing assistance is associated with physical and emotional challenges for both caregivers and people living with dementia. Here, we evaluated the impact of Gentle Persuasive Approaches (GPA) Bathing, a program of online dementia-specific educational units, on bathing-related self-efficacy among nursing students.
Methods: A total of 517 final-year nursing students in a Canadian university completed three GPA Bathing units. Of those, 384 participants completed quantitative and qualitative measures of dementia-specific bathing self-efficacy, including Likert-type ratings and open-ended questions at both the pre- and post-intervention time points. Participants also rated their satisfaction with the units.
Results: At baseline, participants expressed feelings of fear, incompetence, and uncertainty when faced with escalating responsive behaviours during provision of bathing assistance. They named limited and basic strategies for supporting a person who was distressed during bathing. After three GPA Bathing units, statistically significant improvements were observed in participants’ bathing self-efficacy scores relative to baseline. In participants’ post-intervention qualitative responses, they described developing an expanding theoretical understanding of and confidence in bathing competencies and could name specific and detailed person-centred care approaches.
Conclusions: Findings suggest that three GPA Bathing units equipped a sample of fourth year nursing students with increased confidence in person-centred bathing strategies. This dementia-specific bathing education will allow the students to provide tailored, respectful, and compassionate bathing care as they encounter people living with dementia throughout their careers. Our findings support the need to embed dementia-specific bathing education into nursing curricula.

Purpose: Nurses’ understanding of pain, commitment to education, and positive attitude are vital for providing high-quality pain care. The goal of this study was to find out how a pain management educational program (PMEP) influenced nurses' self-efficacy, knowledge, and attitudes toward pain care.
Methods: A randomized experimental study design was utilized. The study was conducted in a governmental hospital in United Arab Emirates, with a total sample of 143 nurses (75 in the interventional group and 68 in the control). The interventional group received six-hours PMEP. Both groups completed questionnaires at baseline (T1), immediately after the program (T2), and at one month (T3).
Results: In comparison to T1 (59.31%), the interventional group's Knowledge and Attitude Survey Regarding Pain (KASRP) scores increased significantly to 82.12% and 77.24% at T2 and T3, respectively. However, the control group exhibited no significant changes. From T1 (M = 2.93 ± 1.27) to T2 (M = 4.27 ± 0.68) and T3 (M = 4.21 ± 0.70), the overall scores of Pain Management Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (PMSEQ) rose notably among interventional group. With no significant increase in the PMSEQ scores of control group at T2 and T3. Positive correlations between KASRP and overall PMSEQ scores were observed in the interventional group at T1 and T2 (p ＜.05) but not at T3 (p =.120), whereas the control group showed significant correlations at all-time points (p ＜.001).
Conclusions: The PMEP significantly enhanced nurses’ knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy in pain management. These improvements were sustained for one month post-PMEP, with positive correlations observed over time between KASRP and overall PMSEQ scores in both groups. Incorporating well-structured PMEP into nursing curricula is highly recommended. Further prospective research is recommended to support these findings.

Emotional distress in high-acuity emergency care settings is frequently underrecognized, resulting in missed opportunities for early behavioral health intervention. At a free-standing Emergency Room (ER) in a small, semi-urban city in a largely rural region of Texas, internal audits revealed a 100% miss rate for identifying adult patients with symptoms of depression or anxiety during triage. Professional guidelines, including recommendations from the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, emphasize routine mental health screening in emergency departments to improve patient safety and outcomes. National data indicate increasing psychiatric-related visits, particularly among youth, many of whom remain undiagnosed. Undiagnosed emotional distress also places additional burdens on emergency care providers managing complex physical presentations without awareness of underlying psychological factors. This highlights the critical need for structured mental health screening protocols in emergency settings to enhance early detection and support comprehensive patient care. This quality improvement project explored how embedding the Mental Health Inventory-5 (MHI-5) screening tool into the intake process at a freestanding emergency department affected early detection of psychological distress in adults aged 18 and older. Over a nine-week implementation period, 710 of 2,583 eligible patients (27.5%) completed the screening. A total of 147 patients screened positive for psychological distress (20.7%); however, only 38 (25.9%) were documented in the electronic health record, reflecting a significant gap in follow-through. Staff noted increased awareness and confidence in addressing mental health concerns. The MHI-5 screening tool identified emotional needs not captured during routine triage. Recommendations include improving documentation workflows, adding EHR prompts, and continuing staff training to support consistent use.

This study investigates how institutional conditions shape nurse students' possibility to contribute to the development of clinical practices by applying the results of their bachelor thesis. The empirical context is a novel educational organization of the final study year, where the bachelor thesis is integrated with clinical placement and includes a mandatory bachelor conference, where students discuss the results from their bachelor thesis with clinicians at their clinical placement for the purpose of enhance innovative ideas for practice development. Drawing on institutional ethnography, the research adopts a mixed-method design, where data were collected via field observations of the bachelor conferences, focus group interviews with students who had held the conference, and a comparative questionnaire with 56 nurse students participating in the intervention and 48 completing existing educational format. The analysis reveals that the conference serves as a pivotal space for professional dialogue with different patterns of reactions. Students reported feelings of professional recognition, but also expressed concern about presenting critical reflections on clinical practice. The relational dynamics—such as fear of exposing poor care or not having enough knowledge themselves—highlight the complexity of embedding innovation within real-world healthcare environments. The findings suggest that integrating bachelor thesis with clinical practice enhances students’ innovation competencies and development of practice. However, the increased complexity calls for deliberate pedagogical strategies that support relational and communicative skills essential for sustainable practice development.