Opioid Use Disorder Education and Trauma-Informed Care Training for Nurses in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

With the ongoing opioid problem in the United States, infants continue to be affected by neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), more specifically neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS), when they are born to mothers with opioid use disorders (OUD), whether treated or untreated. While neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurses are taught to care for infants with NAS through NAS scoring of their conditions and treatments, there is a gap in their knowledge regarding the NICU patients’ mothers’ OUD and treatment. A literature search supported education and training as remedies, so through an education module that included trauma-informed care (TIC) framework training, NICU nurses at a large tertiary hospital in North Carolina demonstrated an increase in knowledge on a post-module test, in addition to positive feedback. The post-test average score was 95.5% (N=35) compared to the pre-test average of 88.64% (N=60), which further suggests the importance and effectiveness of increased education for NICU nurses.