6 Discussion
A number of studies have indicated that training on drugs and alcohol in Brazilian undergraduate nursing education is
inadequate. The present study data support this observation. Most participants revealed that the class and training time
required to work in this area did not exceed three hours during the undergraduate program, less than the average time
devoted to drug and alcohol education in earlier studies, which ranged from four to six hours . As earlier research
involved samples of public college students , these results demonstrate that alcohol and other drugs have received even
less attention at private colleges. This fact is a source of concern when considering that most nursing schools in Brazil are
affiliated with private colleges.
The analysis of the percentages of participants who scored above the median on the three factors studied shows a slight
predominance of positive attitudes towards alcohol, alcoholism and alcohol addicts, indicating that participants are in
favor of drinking, agree that people should drink if they want to and consider drinking to be normal . These attitudes,
however, seem to be restricted to moderate alcohol use; according to the same students, some people drink and are able to
control their alcohol intake, whereas others are not, indicating that this attitude does not extend to people who are not able to control this behavior. Despite their positive attitudes towards moderate alcohol use, students do not consider alcohol use
to be risk free and are in doubt as to whether small alcohol doses can cause addiction. Despite the presence of
above-median scores for all factors, the percentage of students who scored below the median was significant, ranging
between 43% and 47%. This result is consistent with the notes of Howard and Chung , who concluded that, although
recent changes have enhanced nurses’ acceptance of misusers, a significant number of nurses still consider alcoholics are
immoral, have a weak character and a small probability of recovery. Whereas the percentage difference between the two
groups (positive versus negative attitudes) was small, the methods used in this study may not have been able to detect
possible differences between these groups or other variables that influenced attitudes. Hence, further studies of this kind
are needed to clarify these issues.