Supporting Nurse Mentors to Reduce the Barriers to Implementing Alcohol Interventions and Brief Advice (IBA) in Primary Care

Key Findings

• The findings of this project suggest that providing a relatively low level of support to nurse mentors based in primary care leads to a significant increase in the delivery of IBA.
• There was a marked increase in the percentage of patients screening positive at an initial screening test going on to receive IBA from 30% at the beginning of the project to 48% at the end.
• There was a modest increase in the percentage of patients who received an initial screen being assessed as requiring a brief intervention from 13% at the beginning of the project to 15% at the end indicating that clinicians were identifying increasing or higher risk drinkers more effectively.
• Following the implementation of the project staff at the surgery appear to be more effective at identifying alcohol-related harm and at providing brief interventions to this group.
• This project indicates that by supporting nurse mentors in leading on the implementation of IBA there is potential for reducing alcohol-related harm within the existing resources of the surgery. This could support primary care in the practical implementation of an evidence based cost effective intervention which has experienced patchy uptake.