Knowing professionals’ attitudes is the basis for the development of skills for dealing with drug dependence. These attitudes may affect patients’ clinical safety and the cost-benefit ratio of the interventions. The goal of this study was to assess emergency and mental health nurses’ attitudes and perceptions towards alcoholics. A multicenter prospective descriptive study was conducted in six hospitals with 167 emergency and mental health nurses. Nurses classified alcoholics as sick individuals, although there was a tendency to feel comfortable working with them. Results indicated that these professionals had a rejecting attitude towards moderate alcohol consumption. We found a significant association between the attitude of the nurse and gender, with the degree of rejection towards the alcoholic being higher in men than in women and with less punitive attitudes in professionals from 0 to 11 years of professional experience.

Objective: The goal of this study was to analyse the attitudes and perceptions of emergency and mental health nurses through the validation of the SM-GIBED scale in specialised care in Spain on alcoholics and other drug-dependent patients. Design and Setting: This cross-sectional study was developed using the Spanish hospital version of the Seaman-Mannello scale to denominate the SM-GIBED scale. Participants: 170 Emergency and Mental Health Nursing from five Spanish Hospitals. Intervention: Self-administered questionnaire to analiyse the perceptions and attitudes about the drug addict and the alcoholic. Primary and Secondary Outcome Measures: A descriptive and inferential analysis of the study variables was carried out. A psychometric analysis was performed to validate the scale. Results: A total of 170 questionnaires were collected from 257 healthcare workers. Overall, 99.1% of the participants had contact with drug-dependent patients during their professional experience. Nearly 75% had difficulties in treating them. The psychometric analysis of the SM-GIBED scale in the Spanish context obtained values of KMO = 0.655 and Bartlett's test p < 0.000. Cronbach's alpha of 0.738 was obtained from the reliability analysis. A reliability analysis of each of the SM-GIBED questions found no case with an alpha lower than 0.71. In conclusion, positive aspects include an ingratiating attitude and subject-to-subject communication when nurses self-define as empathic and non-paternalistic. Among the negative aspects, there is a lack of communication skills and assertiveness with these patients. This highlights a certain degree of resignation and dissatisfaction when working with drug addicts.

(1) Background: tuberculosis (TB) is considered one of the leading causes of death by a single in-fectious agent worldwide. This study aimed to identify hotspots of people diagnosed with tu-berculosis and abusive use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs in communities through a geo-spatial intelligence application; (2) Methods: ecological study with a spatio-temporal approach. We considered tuberculosis cases diagnosed and registered in the Notifiable Diseases Information System, which presented information on alcoholism, smoking, and other drugs. Spatial Variations in Temporal Trends (SVTT) and scan statistics were applied for the identification of Hotspots; (3) Results: of 29.499 cases of tuberculosis were identified. And when we applied the STTT for al-coholism, three Hotspots were detected, one of which was protective (RR: 0.08 – CI95%: 0.02 – 0.32) and two at risk (RR:1.42 – CI95%: 1.11 – 1.73; RR: 1.39 - CI95%: 1.28 – 1.50). Regarding smoking, two risk clusters were identified (RR: 1.15 - CI95%: 1.01 – 1.30; RR: 1.68 - CI95%: 1.54 – 1.83). For other drugs, a risk cluster was found (RR: 1.13 - CI95%: 0.99 – 1.29) and two protections (RR: 0.70 - CI95%: 0.63 – 0.77; RR: 0.76 – CI95%: 0.65 – 0.89); (4) Conclusions: it was evidenced in the communities a problem of TB and drug addiction. Use disorder perhaps in a person's brain and behavior and leads to an inability to continue their treatment, putting the community at risk for TB.

Surgical treatment of tuberculosis has been applied in the former Soviet Union more frequently than in other countries. On the contrary to the international practice, tuberculoma has been often operated. There has been a decreasing tendency since the last decades; but the surgery rate is still comparatively high. Surgeries were sometimes performed without preceding chemotherapy. Among others, an argument in favour of the early surgery was non-compliance increasing with time. Compulsory treatments of patients with Tb and/or alcoholism are discussed here. The factors predisposing to the use of invasive procedures with questionable indications included the partial isolation from international scientific community, insufficient consideration of the principles of informed consent, professional autonomy and scientific polemics, as well as paternalistic attitude to patients. The message of this preprint is that patients should not undergo operations to comply with doctrines. Evidence-based clinical indications must be determined individually.