Attitudes and current practice in alcohol screening, brief intervention, and referral for treatment among staff working in urgent and emergency settings: An open, cross-sectional international survey.

UEC workers are willing to engage in SBIRT for alcohol prevention but there are challenges to implementation in UEC environments and concerns about workload impacts on already-burdened staff, particularly in the context of global workforce shortages. UEC workers advocate for clear guidelines and policies, increased staff capacity and/or dedicated health promotion teams onsite, SBIRT education/training/resources, appropriate physical spaces for SBIRT conversations and improved alcohol referral pathways to better funded services. Implementation of SBIRT could contribute to improving population health and reducing service demand, but it requires significant and sustained commitment of time and resources for prevention across healthcare organisations.