Nurse autonomy, peer support keys to SUD recovery initiative

RWJBarnabas Health, based in West Orange, N.J., is improving patient access to substance abuse disorder (SUD) recovery services. “We were seeing more and more patients in our emergency departments with overdoses," says AONL member Nancy Holecek, MHA, RN, senior vice president and chief nursing officer, Northern Region at RWJBarnabas Health. "We were able to do immediate treatment [but] we realized that we needed to do something much more." In 2016, the hospital created a program for patients who arrived at the hospital after overdosing and receiving Narcan. The intervention connected patients at the bedside with “peer recovery specialists” who had been in their shoes. Nurses and physicians were educated about substance use disorder (SUD) and how to employ the peer recovery specialists, and nurses were given greater autonomy to connect those team members to patients. People wanting assistance following discharge were referred to patient navigators or case managers. Since the program was extended to all patients with signs of SUD in 2018, it has served more than 23,000 individuals. (HealthLeaders Media story, 12/6/19)