Tag Archives: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

[Maia Brown] If you come across someone with
an opiate overdose, I’d like to share with you how you can help
in five easy steps.

Step one. Check for signs of
opiate overdose. Remember that these patients
have pinpoint pupils and decreased respiratory drive,
meaning they’re breathing less than 5 times a minute or not at all. You may also see signs of drug
use on scene, like pills on the ground or an IV needle sticking
out of their arm.

Step two. Call 911 so we can
come and help you.

Step three. If you have
naloxone, go ahead and give it. You will not hurt the patient by
trying to give this medication.

Step four. Help the patient with
their breathing. If they’re not already on their
back, roll them onto their back and put them in a sniffing
position so that they have a nice open airway. Remember that naloxone can cause
patients to vomit, in which case roll them onto their side into
the recovery position.

Step 5. Continue to monitor the patient
and look for any changes in how they present to you and wait for
help to arrive. That’s all there is to it. Thank you for being willing to
help.

[Ben Savitch] I worked for many years in inner
city hospitals in Chicago, and I remember distinctly one shift
many years ago where I was working in the overnight shift
and in the morning I looked up from my computer station and I
saw that our emergency department was overwhelmed with
people that were there due to opioid overdoses. Many of these individuals had
received Narcan in the field by EMS and additional doses in the
emergency department. And that was really a
recognition point for me that we were immersed in this epidemic. And certainly the issue has
persisted and extends across our entire country.

[Angadpreet “Preet” Sidhu] My community
has been disproportionately affected by the opiate crisis. Earlier this year, New York City
Health and Hygiene released their 2021 data on overdose
deaths. One particular statistic was
breakdown by neighborhood. Metropolitan Serves East Harlem,
which ranked #5 in neighborhoods with overdose deaths in all of
New York City for 100,000 residents #6 on the list was
Harlem neighborhood served by my hospital, Harlem Hospital.

[Alan Grow] They asked that any members of
the community that know of anybody struggling with
addiction to any sort of drug or alcohol, please get them help. The most important thing is
getting these people help, realizing that the stuff that
they’re doing is not only bad for them, but it’s going to harm
somebody else.

[Kavita Babu] I think it’s a real testament
to emergency medicine how much our care of patients with a opioid
use disorder has changed in my more than 20 years in practice. When I started, we would simply
give patients a handout advising them not to use drugs, but now
we’re able to send them out of our emergency departments with
things like buprenorphine, naloxone or Suboxone, meloxone
or Narcan, as well as harm reduction supplies and won’t
hand offs to treatment programs. Prescribing buprenorphine is one
of my favorite parts of my practice. Now that there’s no X waiver
required, we’re able to bring this safe and effective
treatment to our patients in a way that decreases their
mortality, all causes and opioid related by up to 50%. Getting Narcan into the right
folks hands. We know that one in seven kids
is going to be used in a reversal to save the life. Ultimately, I’m hoping that
emergency medicine can continue its trajectory towards a stigma
free environment for these patients. Patients with OUD and all of our
patients are worth saving. Thank you for being a lifesaver.

[Angadpreet “Preet” Sidhu] What needs to be
done more is to break down the stigma of medication to opiate, of
medications for opiate use disorders such as Suboxone. Narcan saves lives, but also
Suboxone saves lives as well.

[Edward W. Boyer] Hello everyone. My name is Ed Boyer
and I have a fentanyl story. So I’m an ER doc and a medical
toxicologist. So my area of sub specialization
is overdoses, poisonings, drug interactions and that sort of
thing. I also have a certain amount of
experience and background in the drug abuse world as well. Now, my daughter was going to
college at Syracuse University and I wanted to make sure that
she went off prepared. And one of the things that I did
was I got 5 fentanyl test strips from one of our harm reduction
colleagues at Ohio State. And I gave them to her. And my message was, I’m not
condoning. I’m not expecting you to use. I don’t expect you to
experiment. But if you ever wind up in a
situation where somebody gives you something and there’s a
temptation to use it, I want you to be safe by testing it with
these test strips. She goes off to college and time
passes, and she actually does well in college. So I’m pretty confident about
how things are going. And then in April of last year,
I got a text at like 2:00 in the morning from my daughter. And it said, essentially you
saved 300 people last night. One of the fraternities had
bought some pills and they gave them around to a whole bunch of
students. And when they got back to the
dorm, some of my daughter’s friends, “friends” wanted to use
them. So they used the fentanyl test
strips. They all contain fentanyl. You know, like, I I, I don’t
know exactly how accurate it is. I don’t know what reporting
happened, you know, the Panhellenic Council heard about
it afterward. But it highlights how the easy
availability of fentanyl test strips can save lives. And it also speaks to how a
broader based public health effort is necessary to help
minimize the the impact of, you know, like adulteration of all
sorts of substances with fentanyl.