Date of Award

Summer 2024

Document Type

Project – Full Written

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Committee Chair

Ashley Isaac-Dockery

Abstract

Background: The opioid epidemic is plaguing North Carolina and has crept its way into the academic setting of many elementary, middle, and high schools in the state, causing school nurses to scramble and search for ways to keep students safe. This DNP project was designed to educate school nurses in a rural county in eastern North Carolina about opioid education and naloxone administration. This project intended to increase the knowledge and confidence level of school nurses in case of an opioid overdose emergency within the school. As more and more children and adolescents experiment with opioids, there is an urgent need for schools to have an active plan in place, naloxone readily available in the school building, and have trained and confident school nurses who can administer naloxone.

Method: Eleven school nurses participated in a 1-day education training session and simulation. Each school nurse completed a six-question pre-intervention and post-intervention survey to determine if the training was efficient and if the nurses’ knowledge, readiness, and confidence level had increased.

Results: Data collected from the pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys revealed an increased knowledge and confidence level regarding general opioid education and how to intervene effectively, administering naloxone during a suspected or potential overdose.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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