edu-cators should present information about ways nursing stu-dents and newly licensed nurses can positively cope withstress, psychological trauma, and exhaustion to avoid mal-adaptive coping through substances. While there are signsthat a nurse may be impaired, those signs and symptomsmay not be apparent. Our data indicate that when discov-ery of SU results in a nurse’s unexpected removal frompatient care, the entire unit’s staff should be debriefed in asession that follows institutional policies and protects thesuspected-impaired nurse’s confidential information. Theinterplay and tensions between human dynamics of addic-tion, legal implications of licensure, safe patient care, andpeer relationships need to be recognized.