Abstract
Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine if a one-day practice oriented workshop on substance abuse screening, assessment, and brief intervention (SBI) would improve vocational rehabilitation (VR) counselors' SBI knowledge and practices.
Design: VR counselors (n = 82) attended a one-day training workshop on SBI. Knowledge and practices were measured before and after the program and four months later. Participants also identified barriers to substance abuse in their practices before the workshop.
Results: Knowledge test scores improved immediately after the program, and remained higher than pre-test scores four-months later (p = 0.000). Before the workshop, counselors reported effective practices in all areas of SA probed, except screening. Four months later, improvements in the use of screening tools were incremental but highly significant (p = 0.001). The two most frequently identified barriers were (1) clients' not keeping referral appointments and (2) time to devote to substance abuse issues with clients.
Conclusions: A one day continuing education training workshop on SBI improved both VR counselor knowledge and reported practice (use of formal SA screen) at four months. The implications of these findings are that VR clients might benefit from the early recognition of at risk use to pre-empt the development of greater problems around substance abuse. While this study did not measure outcomes at the client level, it justifies further investigations of both the routinization of VR counselor substance abuse brief intervention efforts (SBI) and the ultimate outcomes on clients over a much wider time frame.