The Employee Assistance Program as a model of care for addicted colleagues: Peer Assistance, by nurses for nurses

In 1983 a group of nurses from the state of Colorado, US, convened to discuss the issues related to substance abuse among their colleagues. The absence of peer support for colleagues experiencing problems with addictions, and regulatory licensure sanction was of serious concern to them. They first determined that nurses themselves should provide services to nurses and students of nursing with substance abuse problems. After a review of the other state efforts, they concurred that the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) offered the comprehensive model of service delivery they envisioned. Originally incorporated in 1984 as NURSES (Nurses United for Recovery, Support and Education Successfully) of Colorado Corporation, this group also viewed the EAP as an important strategy to operationalise professional self‐regulation (Pace, 1990).This paper focuses on employee assistance programming, provided by nurses, as an effective workplace intervention strategy for the identification and referral to treatment of nurses affected by substance abuse and dependence.