Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) in a Polish Emergency Room: Challenges in Cultural Translation of SBIRT

A randomized clinical controlled trial of Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for drinking and related problems among at-risk and dependent drinkers, using nurse interventionists, was undertaken in an emergency room (ER) in Sosnowiec, Poland, the first level-one trauma center in that country. This study was the first outside of the US to test protocols developed in a 14-site collaborative SBIRT study. Because Poland has both a pattern of heavy drinking and a highly accessible specialized alcohol treatment system, it offered a key setting for cultural translation of SBIRT to the international context of a new and emerging health care system. It also offered the opportunity to test the effectiveness of SBIRT with both at-risk and dependent drinkers, and to test the feasibility of using ER nursing staff to provide the brief intervention, serving as a potential model for ongoing implementation of SBIRT in ER settings. Findings suggest that the US-based SBIRT protocols can be successfully translated to other cultures, and that nurses can be successfully trained to provide brief intervention for problem drinking in the ER setting.