The Efficacy of Narcotic Contracts in Preventing Drug-Seeking Behaviors in Adolescents Experiencing Chronic Pain Related to Sickle Cell Anemia

It is a primary job of a nurse to advocate for their patients. If a patient is in pain, it is the nurse who is responsible for making sure that their pain gets treated. Adolescents with sickle cell anemia experience chronic pain related to vaso-occlusive crises. Once the symptoms start, they will, “persist throughout life, and there is no cure” (Atoui, 2015, p. 425). Due to their long-term use of narcotics, these adolescents could begin to demonstrate drug-seeking behaviors. Narcotic contracts are an intervention that health care teams have created to prevent drug-seeking behaviors in patients using narcotics to treat chronic pain. This study will include distributing a survey to pediatric nurses to obtain data that will suggest whether or not narcotic contracts are effective in preventing drug-seeking behaviors in adolescents with sickle cell anemia. The population of this study is all pediatric nurses, without any inclusion or exclusion criteria. The target population is pediatric nurses involved in Sigma Theta Tau International, Rho Alpha, and Northern California Society of Pediatric Nurses Chapter Forming. Convenience and snowball sampling will be used, as well as giving the survey to members of Sigma Theta Tau International, Rho Alpha, and Northern California Society of Pediatric Nurses Chapter Forming. The target sample size is thirty participants. The results will be analyzed using descriptive statistics; mean, median and mode; and frequency distributions. Narrations gathered from the surveys will be analyzed using content analysis. Results of this study are pending and will be shared with conference participants