SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- For emergency room nurses who have seen too many kids so drunk they are barely able to breathe, a research project gearing up in Sacramento holds out tantalizing hope.Perhaps asking those youngsters about their own needs and motives, even for just a few minutes, could give them tools they'll need to stay safer next time."If something as small as 15 minutes could work, it would be awesome," said Jessica Nelson, a Roseville, Calif., emergency nurse who was among those being trained last week in how to make the most of a quick conversation. Nurses from four California trauma centers in Sacramento and Placer counties have volunteered for a study on whether the technique -- known as brief intervention -- can cut down on repeat dangerous drinking.The idea is that virtually everyone who has bad habits is ambivalent about them, said intervention trainer Chris Dunn, a professor at the University of Washington Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.Tapping into those mixed feelings and helping people spot their own reasons for playing it safer appears to work better than trying to scare them straight, he said.As tempting as it might be when you're worried about a child, "tough talk fails," Dunn told nurses during a session on how to ask the right questions - and avoid lecturing."All you've got to do is care too much, and you'll go in there and talk tough and you'll screw it up -- you'll fail," he told the nurses.The brief intervention approach has been gaining steam for the past 10 to 15 years, and seems to work especially well on people who are already stressed by the consequences of their own behavior, said Dr. Garth Utter, a UC Davis Medical Center trauma surgeon.That includes people hospitalized after drunken driving crashes - and perhaps also people arrested for driving under the influence.Utter is among researchers studying whether brief interventions in Sacramento County's jail will cut down on repeat drunken driving arrests. Results could come in 2011, once driving records of those who got intervention are compared with those who didn't.For nurses, a quick way to make a difference is "something we've longed for for a long time," said Hillary Mitchell, a Mercy San Juan Medical Center emergency room nurse in Carmichael, Calif.She has seen middle school students come in drunk. Some aren't in danger of anything more than an upset stomach, but others have been in stupors, unable to breathe without help.Right now, Mitchell said, she and her colleagues treat immediate medical problems, but their intervention is pretty much limited to making sure youngsters have somewhere safe to go when they leave."It gets frustrating," she said. "It's something we've rolled our eyes at and felt helpless."With so much already crammed into hectic shifts, trying to find even 15 minutes for a conversation "is going to be a challenge," said Sutter nurse Nelson. But it will be "exciting" to see if it works.Results will be monitored for two years, through follow-up interviews with the youngsters and by tracking the number of minors killed or injured in drunken driving crashes in Sacramento County.E-mail Carrie Peyton Dahlberg at cpeytondahlberg(at)sacbee.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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