Mentor: Sara Arter, Ph.D.

As the opioid epidemic has grown in scale in the past decades, its impact on mothers with substance use disorder (SUD) can result in significant stigma when seeking healthcare (Renberg, 2024). This stigma by healthcare providers can be amplified by concerns for the well-being of their children, resulting in workers to express bias in providing care (Barnett et al., 2021). Thus, these patients can face barriers to accessing supportive care.

Providing care to vulnerable populations such as mothers with SUD presents unique challenges for experienced nurses and undergraduate nursing students. Developing the skills to recognize and address personal biases, and provide ethical, patient-centered care, is important in improving health outcomes. For nursing students in particular, early exposure to these situations is helpful in shaping attitudes and fostering more empathetic, non-stigmatizing care.

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