Implementation of online opioid overdose prevention, recognition and response trainings for professional first responders: Year 1 survey results

Abstract

Background This article reports on the first web-based implementation of an opioid-overdose prevention, recognition and response training for professional first responders. The training was disseminated nationally over one listserv in November, 2014. The same year, following Act 139, which mandated the provision of an online training for police officers in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Department of Health approved the training. It was subsequently adopted as the primary training tool for police and other first responders in Pennsylvania and has been used as a training tool by first responders nationally. Methods Analyses employed descriptive statistics to report characteristics of a sample of 387 professional first responders who completed a survey about their experience with the online training. Z-ratios were used to compare independent proportions related to overdose, naloxone, and satisfaction with the training between key subgroups, and paired t-tests were used to compare participant responses to a range of items pre- and post-participation in the training. Results Between January – October 2015, 4,804 first responders took the training; 1,697 (35.3%) agreed to be contacted; of these, 387 (22.8%) completed a survey about the training and subsequent overdose response experiences. The majority (86.4%) were from Pennsylvania, with police representing over half of the sample. Analysis of the post-training survey indicates high satisfaction with content, format and mode of delivery, and high satisfaction with items related to confidence and overdose reversal preparedness. Conclusions This study demonstrates the feasibility and acceptability of implementing online training for first responders in overdose prevention, recognition and response.

A scoping review of harm reduction training for police officers

“…Other trainings used lecture‐based oral presentations with a hands‐on activity (e.g. field visit ) or a mix of hands‐on activities with instructional videos, small‐group discussions and role‐playing . Another program combined an instructional video with an integrated hands‐on activity for administering intranasal naloxone .…”

“…Few sources discussed enabling conditions for allowing better implementation, adoption, and sustainability of training programs . Commonly discussed were needs for organisational buy‐in and commitment from senior leadership within police stations to help legitimise trainings and increase its likelihood of impact on policing practices .…”

“…Amongst the 31 references that met the inclusion criteria, there were 28 unique training programs described [15,16,[29][30][31][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]. Overall, the literature selected for this review contained general to specific and detailed descriptions of training compo- Figure 1.…”

“…Two sources discussed a training program focused on NSPs [15,18]. The remaining eight training programs were multidimensional and provided information on a range of harm reduction topics [4,17,33,36,39,47,50,52].…”

“…Drugs and drug use. Ten training programs covered content related to drugs, including drug names, types and use [17,35,39,50], with seven opioid-specific [34,35,37,[41][42][43]53]. Eleven training programs also included information on the pharmacological effects of drugs [17,35,37,39,42,50] and addiction [30,34,35,41,42,44,50,52,53], the immediate and longterm effects and high-risk groups [30,41,42,52].…”