With the emergence of the global opioid crisis, the necessity to reevaluate the role of a nurse in public health promotion and design strategies for mitigating the crisis appeared. The comparison between the attitudes toward the subject matter in the U.S. and UK has shown that the health authorities in both countries strive to handle the issue by revisiting the approach toward prescription process and especially the criteria for qualifying for opioid medications that have profound effects on patients.
To advocate for the global perspective on the issue of the opioid crisis and the need to change the current standards for opioid prescription, one will need to bring the problem to the global public’s attention. As a nurse leader, one will have to include the global perspective into the local practice by introducing changes to the current standards for opioid prescriptions. By reducing the dosage standards and offering the opioid medications that have lesser side effects on patients, nurses will be able to address the problem on both local and global levels. Moreover, patient education should be promoted to increase compliance with new standards for opioids consumption. Thus, the rate and severity of dependency in patients will drop.
The incorporation of the global perspective will also shape a nurse’s role since it will allow a nurse to shape the current regulations by offering evidence directly from healthcare practice. Moreover, the incorporation of the global perspective on a local level will gradually lead to global change. Once the problem is perceived as an issue that causes global opioid epidemics, changes in the guidelines for prescribing opioids will be altered across the globe. Thus, the opioid crisis will be manage, and strategies for avoiding it in the future will be established..