Can We Talk about Alcohol for a Minute? Thoughts and Opinions Expressed by Health Professionals and Patients at a Somatic Hospital

ABSTRACT

This study aims to investigate the attitudes and opinions that are present among patients and health professionals toward addressing patients’ alcohol use during a hospital stay. We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine health professionals and five patients to explore their opinions and attitudes toward asking and being asked about alcohol during a hospital stay. The data were analyzed using an ad hoc method consisting of primarily close reading and meaning condensing. The main barriers about alcohol as a topic in healthcare lie with health professionals. While patients have reservations and preferences regarding when and how they are asked about alcohol, they all consider knowledge about alcohol habits as important for the health professional to have. The study’s results suggest that actions to better preventive efforts regarding inexpedient alcohol use should mainly focus on breaking barriers hindering the health professionals in asking their patients. This can be done by focusing on education for the health professionals on this topic and developing tangible guidelines for when and how to ask patients for the health professionals to depend on.

KEYWORDS:

• Alcohol
• barriers
• health professionals
• patients
• opinions
• preventive efforts

Disclosure statement

All authors declare that they have received no support from any organization for the submitted work; they have no financial relationships with any organizations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years and have no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Data availability statement

Data can be made available by writing to corresponding author, Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen, [email protected]

Additional information

Funding

All funding was made available by the University of Southern Denmark.