Intertwining Recovery and Community with Kathleen McCoy
September is National Recovery Month! APNA member Kathleen McCoy, DNSc, APRN-BC, PMHNP-BC, PMHCNS-BC, FNP-BC, FAANP, FNKF shares information on recovery, the importance of community, and the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Opioid Workforce Expansion Program (OWEP), a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funded recovery-based program.
McCoy is an Associate Professor in Community Mental Health at the University of South Alabama. She was a 2006 Janssen Scholar, a 2005 recipient of the Tennessee (TAPNA) APNA Award for Excellence in Leadership – APRN, and the 2023 recipient of the APNA Award for Excellence in Leadership – APRN. Her presentation about the OWEP program is available for free through September 29 in the APNA eLearning Center as a part of funding APNA received through the Opioid Response Network.
APNA: How can we strive to be healthier and achieve our wellness goals while in recovery?
McCoy: To attain a higher state of health while in or achieving recovery is not easy, yet it can be done.
Meet basic human needs, get adequate sleep, hydration, nutrition, a safe environment, and a good support system. Without these, recovery plans will be more difficult. Identify what must be done to initiate or continue recovery, and then what one would like to accomplish. Take it slow and be methodical. Remove one block and see the other pieces fall into different places. Have hope in measured, incremental, fractional changes. It’s the commitment to smaller steps that assists in goal attainment.
Keep your provider and support system close at hand and advised of your approaches, and goals, seek their wisdom when in doubt. Stick with the treatment plan, keep appointments, and ask questions if there are doubts about treatment in a timely manner.
“Nurses across all levels are in a key position, and indispensable to link recovery in life across the board rather than isolating recovery to strictly addictions.”
APNA: We all need a stable and safe place to call home. How can the journey to recovery assist in this search for stability and comfort?
McCoy: A suitable home and recovery are deeply intertwined. A home should provide safety, stability, and dependability. Home needs to have the basic elements of food, shelter, a place to sleep, a space to bathe with privacy, access to seasonally appropriate apparel, and access to one’s support system.
Community supports strengthen those recovering, together. There is palpable power in a journey of community members walking together toward health and wellness while meeting one another’s basic needs. Community builds connection, and connection can turn into a higher journey, even one that is deeply spiritually fulfilling.
APNA: Finding purpose in life may be a powerful driver for recovery. Does OWEP include tools to assist in the search for purpose while in recovery? How do you think this can be achieved?
McCoy: The Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Opioid Workforce Expansion program (OWEP) for the Gulf Region Program includes a full course in recovery, following OUD/SUD prevention and the addictions screening/treatment courses. The course defines the new workforce mainstream concepts, systems and practices pertinent to OUD/SUD: what recovery constitutes, means to attain recovery, and rewards of recovery. Indeed, rewards are the drivers for recovery.
Supporting patients in search of or in recovery includes wraparound services across the lifespan. This means the APN must have connections to all community agencies where recovery is expected. OWEP provides avenues to develop community linkages, which can be an art form of building relationships across time.
APNA: How can providers build or assist in building social supports and a caring community that is essential for recovery?
McCoy: Providers tend to move the needle of acceptance of recovery in their community settings better than most. Nurses across all levels are in a key position, and indispensable to link recovery in life across the board rather than isolating recovery to strictly addictions. Linking life processes of loss and inevitable disappointments to the journey of optimal health is key, and this can be accomplished using the skill of therapeutic use of self and conversation daily.
Recovery processes are everywhere and include growth, maturity, and a journey with stop-and-go points, drop-offs, and continuances. While healthy boundaries should always be in place, teaching and modeling recovery as a “normal lifestyle” will assist in community stigma reduction, and a more accepting culture that needs recovery.
Promoting recovery and its concepts is best accomplished face to face, over a cup of tea, sharing with neighbors, informally, heart to heart. This is where the credibility of the professional nurse is salient, palpable, and highly influential. Be committed to being a “nurse friend” to assist your community in recovery efforts. Aren’t we all recovering from something? Transparency and offering of self while promoting the concepts of recovery by “being recovery” make this message clearer than any other means possible.
>>> Hear from Kathleen at the APNA 38th Annual Conference on Wednesday, October 9 in a two-part pre-conference series, Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO®) virtual community telementoring model: Academic and Clinical Application. Register Now!
Grant Statement:
Funding for this initiative was made possible (in part) by grant no. 1H79TI0855888-02 from SAMHSA. The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
About APNA: The American Psychiatric Nurses Association is a national professional membership organization committed to the practice of psychiatric-mental health nursing and wellness promotion, prevention of mental health problems, and the care and treatment of persons with psychiatric disorders. APNA’s membership is inclusive of all psychiatric-mental health registered nurses including associate degree, baccalaureate, advanced practice (comprised of clinical nurse specialists and psychiatric nurse practitioners), and nurse scientists and academicians (PhD). APNA serves as a resource for psychiatric-mental health nurses to engage in networking, education, and the dissemination of evidence. The American Psychiatric Nurses Association is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
