| Sumario: | In an effort to describe the characteristics and sources of social support of nurses with chemical dependency problems, the Norbeck Social Support Questionnaire was administered via a mail survey to a purposeful sample of 135 chemically impaired nurses who were members of nurse support groups. The mean sample age was 42 years and the mean initial age of abuse was 23.3 years. The mean lengths of time in recovery and in nurse support groups were 23.9 months and 22.8 months, respectively. Twenty-seven percent of the sample were females and 21.5 percent males. Subjects reflected all levels of nursing education, with almost 60 percent of the subjects equally distributed between diploma and associate degree nursing backgrounds. Approximately 14 percent of the subjects were single; 44.4 percent were married; and 40.7 percent were divorced, widowed or separated. Eighty nine percent of the subjects were Caucasian. The most common sources of referral to the nurse support groups were the State Boards of Nursing. Voluntary participation (46.7%) differed little from involuntary participation (53.3%). Subjects attended multiple other support groups with Alcoholics Anonymous being the one most frequently cited (83.7%). Job related issues were cited 83.3 percent of the time as major motivators to recovery, and were identified first by 28.0 percent of the subjects. Emotional problems were identified by 85.9 percent of the subjects with 27.3 percent ranking it first. Although sources of support identified by the subjects closely parallelled normative data, much higher support from the counselor/therapist category was reported. When compared to the normative group, the subjects reported less support from weaker support groups and experienced greater losses. The study did demonstrate that the subjects lost more of the significant individuals in their network when compared with the normative data. The findings also suggested that both colleague support and the nurse support group were especially important to recovery.
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