Elsevier

Drug and Alcohol Dependence

Volume 146, 1 January 2015, Pages 107-110
Drug and Alcohol Dependence

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Police officer attitudes towards intranasal naloxone training

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.10.026Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Administered a survey to police officers following intranasal naloxone training.

  • Most officers had been at the scene of more than one overdose in the past year.

  • Survey responses suggest that officers had positive attitudes regarding naloxone training and feel that other police officers should be trained.

  • Opioid Overdose Attitudes Scale (OOAS) items were included in the survey and showed high internal consistency.

  • Officers who had the most experience with overdose felt more competent and concerned following training than those with less experience.

Abstract

Background

One approach to reduce fatal opioid overdose is by distributing naloxone to law enforcement officers. While several cities have implemented these naloxone programs, little research has investigated officer attitudes about their training. The present research attempts to fill this gap by analyzing survey data from police officers following intranasal naloxone training.

Methods

All of the police officers within the same district in Indianapolis, Indiana, underwent training to recognize opioid overdose and to administer intranasal naloxone (N = 117). Following training, officers completed a survey that measured prior experience with opioid overdose, perceived importance of training, and items from the Opioid Overdose Attitudes Scale (OOAS) to measure attitudes following training.

Results

The officers had overwhelmingly positive feelings about the training, that it was not difficult, and that other officers should be trained to use naloxone. The OOAS items suggest that officers know the appropriate actions to take in the event of an overdose and feel that administering intranasal naloxone will not be difficult. Finally, we found that officers who had more experience with opioid overdose had more positive attitudes about the training.

Conclusion

Distributing naloxone to police officers is likely a trend that will continue so it is important to understand how police officers respond to training to assure that future trainings are as effective as possible. Further research is needed to investigate the impact that these programs have on the community.

Introduction

The rate of fatal drug overdose has increased by nearly 600% over the past three decades and many of these overdoses are now attributed to opioid analgesics such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone (Calcaterra et al., 2013, Warner et al., 2011a, Warner et al., 2011b). Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that reverses the respiratory depression that occurs during an overdose. Many drug overdoses are witnessed by others and can be prevented if naloxone is used to intervene (Tracy et al., 2005, Sporer et al., 1996). For more than 40 years naloxone has been used by emergency medical personnel to reverse overdose (Clarke et al., 2005) though more recently there has been a growing trend in expanding those who can administer naloxone ranging from alternative public safety providers to community-based opioid overdose prevention programs providing naloxone (CDC, 2012, Beletsky et al., 2012).

One example of public safety expansion has been training and distributing naloxone to law enforcement officers (Davis et al., 2014, Wermeling, 2010). Police are often at the scene of an overdose prior to emergency medical personal and so equipping officers with naloxone and training them to detect the signs of an opioid overdose could help to reduce rates of fatal overdose. While paramedics typically administer naloxone using a needle, police officers are generally being equipped with intranasal naloxone, an aerosol spray absorbed through the nasal mucosa which is just as effective, considered easier to administer, and eliminates the risk of needle exposure for police officers (Kerr et al., 2009, McDermott and Collins, 2012).

Recent research suggests that police officers are concerned about opioid overdose and frustrated by their inability to help (Green et al., 2013). As police departments across the United States continue to implement naloxone training, no research has attempted to examine or assess this training. Our research attempts to fill this gap by analyzing survey data of police officer attitudes of intranasal naloxone training

Section snippets

Methods

Over a two-week period in spring 2014, all of the officers in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department's (IMPD) Southwest District were required to attend intranasal naloxone training. A total of 22 training sessions occurred after officer roll calls. Each officer attended only one training session, each session was approximately 20–25 min, and the number of officers ranged from four to eight per session. All of the trainings were conducted by one of three trained emergency medics from

Results

A total of 119 officers attended the training; however, two of them left without taking the survey, leaving 117 completed survey instruments. The number of years served as an officer ranged from 1 to 39; (M = 17.26; SD = 9.09). Nearly all of the officers (93.2%) had been at the scene of opioid overdose in the past year: 23.1% having seen less than three, 29.9% between three and five, 10.3% between six and eight, 10.3% between 9 and 11, and 22.2% having seen 12 or more overdoses in the past year.

Discussion

It has become increasingly common to equip law enforcement with naloxone though to-date no study has attempted to capture officer attitudes following training. The present study attempts to fill this gap by surveying a district of officers who had recently been trained to use intranasal naloxone. While this survey was exploratory in scope, our analysis revealed several noteworthy findings. First, responses overwhelmingly suggested that naloxone training was not difficult and that trained

Role of funding source

Nothing declared.

Contributors

BR and DO conceived of the study. DO designed the naloxone training. BR oversaw data collection and analysis. BR, DO, and KK all contributed to the first drafts of the manuscript. BR prepared the final manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

No conflict declared.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Bryan Roach, Susan Hill, and David Hoffman for their cooperation in helping to implement this program and coordinating the training sessions. We are also grateful to Brittany Hood for her assistance in data collection and the officers of the IMPD Southwest district for their involvement in this training.

References (18)

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