Substance use is a growing problem across populations. As a helping professional, you need a basic understanding of how substance use affects your clients. This information will help you to provide support and resources to help clients seek treatment and recovery. In this course, you will explore substance use disorders, how they develop, and their impact on individuals. The course also explains your role as a paraprofessional when working with individuals with substance use disorders. You will be provided an overview of evidence-based interventions and the types of substance use treatment programs available, when additional treatment may be necessary. Detailed examples will help you to apply this information in your own work. The goal of this course is to provide paraprofessionals and peer support specialists in health and human service settings with information on substance use disorders and evidence-based interventions.

HIPAA rules underlie every service related to behavioral health, and they change to meet evolving trends. There are potentially catastrophic organizational and individual consequences if the current HIPAA rules are not followed. This course will help you to identify potential legal and ethical issues related to HIPAA, improve your compliance approach, and develop more effective risk management strategies.

The goal of this course is to assist alcohol and drug counselors, marriage and family therapists, professional counselors, psychologists, social workers, and nurses in health and human services settings in understanding and applying current HIPAA regulations.

In this course, you will learn about Motivational Interviewing, an intervention to help people discover their own desire and ability to make difficult changes. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a way of communicating that draws out people’s own thoughts and beliefs in order to help them address their ambivalence about making a change.

The course uses a blend of instructive information and interactive exercises to help you understand and apply its core concepts. The goal of this course is to provide addictions, behavioral health counseling, marriage and family therapy, nursing, psychology, and social work professionals in health and human service settings with the skills to define and demonstrate the core concepts of Motivational Interviewing.

Malignant hyperthermia (MH) is a life-threatening syndrome associated with an anesthetic trigger. Awareness of MH by all perioperative team members, from those working in the preoperative holding area to those in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), is important in preventing negative patient outcomes.

Proper surgical specimen handling is essential for patient safety. This course covers best practices for intraoperative personnel to prepare, label, and transfer specimens accurately. Adhering to these protocols ensures that specimens are identified and handled appropriately, minimizing the risk of harm to the patient.

This course provides OR nurses and surgical technologists with knowledge of best practices for specimen handling.

This is an exciting time to work in the field of behavioral health treatment. The field has changed dramatically in the direction of operating on the principles of recovery. Recovery treatment involves changing our attitudes and beliefs about serious mental illness and the long-term effects of these illnesses over the lifespan to reflect the belief that recovery is the expected outcome. The field continues to expand into areas of advancing the integration of mental health to physical health, connecting to multiple dimensions of wellness and alternative medicine, as well as incorporation of peer recovery specialists. Each of these areas supports the recovery of persons with behavioral health issues.

The OR is a complex environment. Highly trained individuals interact in a specialized setting with sophisticated and technically complicated devices, instruments, and equipment. There are also substantial differences among team members related to education, experience, skill level, influence, and formal and informal power. This course will inform nurses and surgical technologists of the evidence-based steps to take to create a culture of safety in the OR.

In the operating room, patient safety depends on high quality communication and shared knowledge among the surgical team. Several factors in this setting can contribute to communication failures like time constraints, shift changes, environmental barriers, the complex nature of surgical procedures, and clashing communication styles. All members of the surgical team must understand the risks to patient safety associated with communication failures, what information must be communicated and when, and how to use an assertive communication style.

The goal of this course is to equip nurses and CSTs with best practices for effectively communicating in the operating room. 

In this course, you will learn to identify different depressive disorders, as well as the unique ways depression manifests in children and adolescents. Additionally, you will learn to recognize risk factors for both depression and suicidality in youth.  

An integrated care model treats the whole child by combining primary care and mental healthcare in one setting. Within this model, treatment providers understand how to screen for depression and suicidality in order to coordinate care. You will learn about specific instruments useful for detecting depression and suicidality among youth. An understanding of the root causes of depression will highlight the rationale for various treatment approaches. Lastly, you will be able to describe the best practices available to help children and adolescents manage depression.