Alcoholic intoxication in the emergency department – evidenced based nursing practice

Worldwide scientific literature and the secular press emphasize that alcohol abuse frequently associates itself to the occurrences of diverse forms of trauma. Currently alcohol is a problem of Public Health. This study characterizes itself as a essay of a bibliographical revision and has as its objective to identify the scientific output of nursing, from the period of 2002 to 2007, concerning alcoholic intoxication, analyzing its application to the practice of nursing. Ten scientific articles were gathered together, being six in Portuguese and four in English. The results reveal a great variety of themes being that these favor a discreet tendency by giving evidence to the lack of preparation of nurses in caring for alcoholic patients and seeking to strengthen the knowledge of these professionals about the theme. The bibliography revealed a single source that proclaims “brief interventions” in caring for patients, although signaling toward a registered structure of medical care, making necessary, still, greater investigations to be annexed to the body of knowledge of nursing and utilized by its professionals