2 Background
Nurses represent the main group of health professionals and experts have appointed their important role in the prevention,
early detection and treatment of alcoholism. There is evidence about the significant influence of these
professionals’ attitudes towards substance misusers on their willingness to intervene and the quality of such interventions
. Research has revealed that nursing students have demonstrated negative attitudes towards substance
misusers. It has also been observed that contact with these patients during education enhances students’ acceptance of
misusers . Tanlyn examined the association between personal alcohol consumption, family history of alcoholism
and the effect of a three-hour seminar on nursing students’ attitudes towards alcoholics. That author found higher
agreement levels with the view that emotional and psychological problems contribute to the etiology of alcoholism in the
group that had participated in training when compared with the control group. Two months later, however, no significant
differences were found between students with training and students in the control group with regard to attitudes towards
alcoholics. Farnsworth and Bairan assessed the effects of a program that comprised four to five hours of reading, in
combination with clinical experiences with substance misusers, on nursing students’ attitudes towards alcoholics. The
results showed an attitude change with regard to skills and satisfaction to work with alcoholics, and that students started to
perceive alcoholics as solitary, sensitive people, in doubt about their own value and suffering from severe emotional
problems. Feigenbaum submitted nursing students to seven hours of weekly training on substance misuse and clinical
experiments with substance abusers during the five years of their undergraduate nursing course. The attitudes of students
who completed the training were examined during the entire period, and it was observed that 79.5% of students changed
towards more positive attitudes. Rassool and Rawaf assessed the impact of an educational program about alcohol and
drugs on knowledge acquisition and attitude changes in nursing students. The findings suggested that the program affected
the nursing students’ attitudes toward substance misusers, as most participants showed more positive attitudes towards
substance misusers in the post-test and were more optimistic, considering alcohol and drugs addiction as a treatable
disease. A study carried out in Brazil to examine nursing students’ knowledge and attitudes towards substance misusers
evidenced students’ positive attitudes towards substance misusers, as most participants rejected the stereotype that