Healthcare Paper on Screening for Alcohol Related Disorders
Introduction
Screening for alcohol and drug usage disorders is hardly practiced in the main health care centers. Although there is a notable prevalence of these disorders, medical practitioners rarely put it into consideration due to their busy schedule and lack of financial support to research on their prevalence. This screening process is important to determine when a person is at greater risks of these disorders, using a number of tools that mostly involve questionnaires.
Tools Used for Screening Alcohol-related Disorders
Some of the common tools for screening of alcohol-related disorders include AUDIT and CAGE. These tools help medical practitioners predict and prevent the occurrence of these alcohol-related disorders.
CAGE
- When using CAGE, one is required to answer four direct questions which mostly will be in a form of questionnaire or an interview. These four questions are; “Have you ever felt you need to Cut down your drinking?”; “Have anyone made you sad by questing you drinking habits”; “Has your drinking ever made you feel guilty?”; and lastly, “Have ever gotten rid of hangovers or calmed your nerves using a morning?” If the interviewee gives a positive feedback to these questions then they have a possible alcohol use disorder.
AUDIT
- AUDIT, on the other hand, uses a ten question set that helps the physician determine the level of alcohol use, the negative results alcohol users can identify, and whether significant others in their life can attest to the existence of any of these disorders.
- The Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) which involves 28 questions can also be used for screening. The answers to these questions determine the person’s DAST score which tells about the extent of the problems related to drug usage.
Conclusion
These conditions are highly prevalent in the society which means that they need serious attention despite the health care system paying little attention to them. It is, however, very important to put intervention procedures after screening to reduce these risks and promote restoration of health. These interventions involve providing information through giving out educational materials that teach the impact of alcohol use and motivational interviews which urges the patient use the prevention interventions. Also, it is very crucial to fund these screening processes to curb the occurrence of alcohol use disorders in the society but most importantly, more intervention processes need to be formulated.