Professional's Attitudes Do Not Influence Screening and Brief Interventions Rates for Hazardous and Harmful Drinkers: Results from ODHIN Study

Abstract

Aims: To determine the relation between existing levels of alcohol screening and brief interventionrates infive European jurisdictions and role security and therapeutic commitment by the participat-ing primary healthcare professionals. Methods: Health care professionals consisting of, 409 GPs, 282 nurses and 55 other staff including psy-chologists, social workers and nurse aids from 120 primary health care centres participated in a cross-sectional 4-week survey. The participants registered all screening and brief intervention activities aspart of their normal routine. The participants also completed the Shortened Alcohol and Alcohol Pro-blems Perception Questionnaire (SAAPPQ), which measure role security and therapeutic commitment. Results: The only significant but small relationship was found between role security and screeningrate in a multilevel logistic regression analysis adjusted for occupation of the provider, number ofeligible patients and the random effects of jurisdictions and primary health care units (PHCU). Nosignificant relationship was found between role security and brief intervention rate nor betweentherapeutic commitment and screening rate/brief intervention rate. The proportion of patientsscreened varied across jurisdictions between 2 and 10%. Conclusion: Thefindings show that the studied factors (role security and therapeutic commitment)are not of great importance for alcohol screening and BI rates. Given the fact that screening and briefintervention implementation rate has not changed much in the last decade in spite of increased pol-icy emphasis, training initiatives and more research being published, this raises a question aboutwhat else is needed to enhance implementation.