Role development and career stages in addiction nursing: an exploratory study
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 17, 2026
Integrating Computerized Linguistic and Social Network Analyses to Capture Addiction Recovery Capital in an Online Community
Published on: May 31, 2019
Carmel Clancy1, Adenekan Oyefeso, Hamid Ghodse
1School of Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex University, London, UK. c.clancy@mdx.ac.uk
Aim:
This paper reports a study to explore factors influencing recruitment and retention in addiction nursing, and the stages and features of role acquisition and personal qualities important to that role.
Background:
Specialist addiction nurses engage in a number of roles in the care of individuals with problematic use of psychoactive substances. These include assessment, outreach, prescribing, counselling, and harm reduction. In a climate of increasing demand for specialist substance misuse workers, and a trend to identify key occupational competencies, there is a need for a framework in which career progression can be supported. Studies exploring the roles of addiction nurses are minimal, and there is less comment on how these roles are developed in the context of career stages.
Method:
A qualitative study using focus groups was undertaken with specialist addiction nurses between March and June 2004. The data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using Burnard's six content analysis stages.
Findings:
Positive factors identified as influencing recruitment and retention included: prior knowledge of the working environment (as a nursing student), opportunities for autonomous practice, the client profile, and associated treatment philosophy and care approach. There was consensus that nurses choosing to work in the field of addiction needed, in addition to being non-judgmental, personal qualities including hardiness, patience and tolerance. Five role development stages, with a set of descriptors, were identified: encounter, engagement, stabilization, competency and mastery.
Conclusion:
Identification of these five role development stages for addiction nurses offers employers, nurse managers, educators and addiction nurses a starting point from which specific occupational competencies can be further explored. In addition, continuing professional development needs can be mapped to specific role development stages. Employers and nurse managers may wish to offer increased learning opportunities to student nurses to gain work experience within specialist addiction units.
Related Concept Videos
01:30Specialized Care Centers and Settings-II
Rural health centers are specialized care facilities in remote locations with very few medical personnel. The primary care providers who run the centers are mostly Registered Nurse Practitioners. Here, emergency treatment is provided to critically ill or injured patients before they are transferred to the closest hospital. Fortunately, due to advancement in technology, many rural healthcare facilities and professionals have easy access to diagnostic and treatment...
01:21Interdisciplinary Care: The Health Care Team-I
Physicians
The physician's primary responsibility is to diagnose illness and direct the medical or surgical treatment of the condition. The authority to admit patients to a healthcare agency or institution and practice care within that setting is granted to physicians by the healthcare agency or institution itself.
01:09Accountability and Responsibility of a Nurse II
For example, a nurse demonstrating respect and compassion might listen attentively to a patient's concerns, provide comfort...
01:17Ethical Dilemmas I
Let us explore some examples to understand the potentially complex moral decisions nurses face.
Take the case of caring for minors, particularly in areas related to reproductive...
01:29Aims Of Nursing
01:27Nursing Ethical Principles II
Consider the following scenario, which illustrates how these principles are applied in the care of Mr. John, a fifty-year-old teacher diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer.
Initially, Mr. John's cancer...