Supporting Real-Life Challenges Facing Today’s Nurses
Through this year’s theme of The Power of Nurses, National Nurses Week (May 6-12, 2025), Karen J. Foli, Ph.D., offers three suggestions for nurses to get support for substance use in healthcare organizations.
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Through this year’s theme of The Power of Nurses, National Nurses Week (May 6-12, 2025) brings attention to the “invaluable contributions of nurses worldwide and the real-life challenges they face every day.”
Among those challenges can be substance use to cope with the demands of their profession and personal life. Karen J. Foli, Ph.D., The Louise Herrington Endowed Chair in Mental Health Nursing at Baylor University’s Louise Herrington School of Nursing (LHSON), offers three suggestions for nurses to get support based on her research and experience with nurses suffering from substance use in healthcare organizations.
“Nursing is an incredible profession. We are seen as the most trusted professionals year after year,” Foli said. “As such, we need to ensure that we can remain trustworthy by investing in our own health and well-being.”
“Nursing is an incredible profession. We are seen as the most trusted professionals year after year. As such, we need to ensure that we can remain trustworthy by investing in our own health and well-being.” - Karen. J. Foli, Ph.D
Much of Foli’s research focuses on mental health and substance use in nurses and looks for solutions to help nurses have access to the support and resources they need to improve their quality of life and reduce suffering. One of her most recent studies, conducted alongside a Ph.D. student, looked at middle-level nurse managers’ stress and substance use.
“What we found reinforces earlier findings, and points to new results to consider. Specifically, nurses want more organizational support, and the lack of support may create workplace stressors that are associated with turnover intention and substance use,” Foli said. “Alcohol was again the substance of choice for nurses.”
Through her work, she describes the importance of gaining compassion from understanding and sharing nurses’ testimonies and narratives. There are many alternatives for nurses as they struggle in their work and personal life, and Foli provides three practical ways that they can find support for their mental health and substance use.
Personal inventory
Nurses can do a personal inventory of their substance and alcohol use and be realistic about their usage and reasons for use.
“Do they come home and routinely have a glass of wine – or more?” Foli said. “Part of this inventory is determining whether this intake is a habit and whether it is part of their coping strategies.”
Professional support
Nurses have access to resources like the National Council of State Boards of Nursing website. Foli noted that there are programs available “that would help them seek treatment and maintain their livelihoods.”
Positive mental health and self-care
Foli said that it is important for nurses to take care of themselves in their day-to-day lives so that they can continue to serve others well.
“Nurses are more open than ever to seeking mental health and valuing self-care,” she said, “so nurses should reach out for therapy or practice self-care – whatever that means to them.”
”We can’t do this alone”
Foli recognizes that nurses cannot invest in their personal health and well-being alone. “Healthcare organizations need to be responsive to the stress that nurses experience,” she said. “For example, healthcare leaders should provide safe staffing levels and institute policies to reduce workplace violence to protect nurses from harm.”
For nurses themselves, peer support is an incredible asset, Foli said.
“Being a nurse is more than adopting it as a profession,” she said. “What we experience through rendering care, seeing the human condition in moments of joy and pain, bonds us together in a beautiful way.”
ABOUT KAREN J. FOLI, PH.D.
Karen J. Foli, Ph.D., RN, ANEF, FAAN, is a tenured professor and the inaugural Louise Herrington Endowed Chair in Mental Health Nursing for Baylor’s Louise Herrington School of Nursing (LHSON). As a nurse theorist and active researcher, Foli conceptualized and disseminated a second middle-range theory – the theory of nurses’ psychological trauma – tying directly to issues of the workplace and nurses’ well-being. The theory revealed a new type of nurse-specific trauma – insufficient resource trauma – which calls for efforts at the organizational level. She has received four Center for Regulatory Excellence grants from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) to investigate nurses with substance use issues and the impact nurse-specific psychological traumas and the regulatory environment have upon their recovery.
In addition to her research, teaching and leadership, Foli’s endowed chair is a complementary position to the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner track within the LHSON Doctor of Nursing Practice graduate degree online program. The track prepares registered nurses to become PMHNPs to address the mental and behavioral needs of individuals and help solve the critical shortage of mental health care providers.
ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY LOUISE HERRINGTON SCHOOL OF NURSING
The Baylor University Louise Herrington School of Nursing (LHSON) located in Dallas, Texas, was established in 1909 as a diploma program within Baylor Hospital in Dallas, which is now Baylor Scott & White Health’s Baylor University Medical Center, and in 1950 became one of the six degree-granting schools of Baylor University. The first Baccalaureate degrees were granted in 1952, establishing the School among the earliest baccalaureate nursing programs in Texas. In 1999, the School was renamed the Baylor University Louise Herrington School of Nursing after Louise Herrington Ornelas, a 1992 Baylor Alumna Honoris Causa, who made an endowment gift to the School. The LHSON offers Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degrees through Traditional, FastBacc® (one-year accelerated) and Distance Accelerated BSN programs. Plus, the LHSON offers an online Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program with tracks that include Family Nurse Practitioner, Nurse-Midwifery, Neonatal Nurse Practitioner, Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, Adult Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Executive Nurse Leadership and U.S. Army Anesthesia Nursing (USAGPAN). U.S. News & World Report 2024 Best Undergraduate Nursing Programs ranked the LHSON No. 39. In addition, U.S. News 2025-2026 Best Graduate Schools rankings list several LHSON programs, including the DNP program at No. 43 nationally and “Best Nursing” specialty rankings for LHSON’s USAGPAN, which operates at the U.S. Army Medical Center of Excellence at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, at No. 4 nationally, and Baylor’s Nurse-Midwifery program, which is No. 22 in the nation. To learn more, visit the School of Nursing website.
ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY
Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked Research 1 institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 20,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions. Learn more about Baylor University at www.baylor.edu.