Nurse Practitioners' Impact on Rural Adolescent

Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

4-2017

Abstract

Adolescent prescription abuse is a rising problem in rural America which requires further study and intervention. Causes and consequences of this epidemic are numerous, and greatly affect the current and future state of our youth’s health. This research problem focuses on exploring the knowledge level of nurse practitioner students on rural adolescent prescription abuse. The study’s aim was to reduce the prevalence of prescription pill abuse among the local adolescent populations in rural Kansas through continued education of nurse practitioner students. The research design was a quasi-experimental one group, pretest-posttest design. The sample of participants were a convenience sample of nurse practitioner students enrolled in a graduate level nurse practitioner program in a rural community. Following a pretest, educational intervention, and posttest, it was concluded that the educational intervention was beneficial in increasing knowledge among the group of participants on adolescent prescription abuse in the rural American population. The goal of the educational intervention was to inform and encourage nurse practitioners who will be prescribing in their future practice to include patient education on proper storing and disposal with every prescription written. Further research is recommended due to limited generalizability of results.

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