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 Sutter Roseville emergency nurse who was among those being trained last week in how to make the most of a quick conversation.

Nurses from four 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 Thursday 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 group.

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 emergency room nurse.

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.

The study, funded by a $622,000 grant from the state Office of Traffic Safety, is scheduled to begin in January at all four trauma centers in the greater Sacramento region: Kaiser Permanente in south Sacramento, Mercy San Juan, Sutter Roseville and UC Davis Medical Center. All minors who test positive for alcohol will be eligible to participate.

It cannot come too soon, said Dana Covington, a UC Davis emergency nurse who is project manager for the program.

"There are more kids coming in drunk," she said, with "the full range of injuries, from minor … to fatal car crashes, huge injuries."

In 2004, children ages 12-17 with alcohol in their systems made up 1.07 percent of the young people seen in UC Davis' emergency department, she said, and the percentage has grown steadily since, rising to 1.47 percent in 2007.

Between January and October of this year, 114 young people treated in the emergency room at UC Davis tested positive for alcohol.

For seriously injured adults, the numbers are far more devastating.

"Somewhere around 40 percent of the people I take care of in the hospital for injuries test positive for alcohol," said trauma surgeon Utter.

With drunken driving killing thousands of people annually in the United States, "it's really an unacknowledged public health problem," he said.

Call The Bee's Carrie Peyton Dahlberg, (916) 321-1086.