Alcohol screening allows healthcare professionals to assess an individual’s alcohol intake levels and any risks associated from their results.¹

NICE recommend: NHS professionals should routinely carry out alcohol screening as an integral part of practice. For instance, discussions should take place during new patient registrations, when screening for other conditions and when managing chronic disease or carrying out a medicine review. 

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ph24/chapter/1-Recommendations

A comprehensive 10 question alcohol abuse screening test that can be used to assess and identify a person’s alcohol consumption, drinking behaviours, and alcohol-related problems. The AUDIT screening test is sometimes used after the AUDIT-C test, when the score is five or more and a complete assessment is required.¹

A simple three question screening tool used to assess a person’s alcohol intake. The results help identify those individuals who may be drinking at a harmful level or those at an increasing risk of drinking at harmful levels.¹

FAST is a simple four question screening tool used to assess a person’s alcohol intake. The results help identify those individuals who may be drinking at a harmful level or those at an increasing risk of drinking at harmful levels.¹

Brief interventions are short, evidence-based discussions to help encourage and support a patient to change, or improve on, a specific lifestyle choice or behaviour.^2-4

The goal is to help patients proactively improve their health and wellbeing, and reduce the risks associated with this lifestyle choice.^2-4

Helping patients understand how much alcohol they are consuming is important and using units is a simpler way to express a drink’s alcohol content than by the standard measure of alcohol by volume (ABV).

Standardised units allow us to track our alcohol consumption to ensure that we’re drinking within the recommended range. Alcohol units will vary depending on the volume of the given drink and the ABV.

Substance Misuse Specialist Nurse at Arrowe Park Hospital shares her experience with asking age-appropriate questions to older patients when screening for alcohol misuse.