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Harm reduction |
Training
20 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| August 2014
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
FILLING THE GAP
The NNEF was encouraged by the success of
its first free training day for needle exchange
staff, says the forum’s chair
Jamie Bridge
‘WE HAVE NO BUDGET FOR TRAINING.’
We heard this plenty of times at
previous NNEF events – when budgets get tight, one of the first casualties is
staff training. Yet training is essential for this sector. We often have relatively
high staff turnover, and staff need to be empowered with the knowledge and
confidence to provide the best advice to our clients.
The National Needle Exchange Forum (NNEF) is a voluntary network that
promotes and supports the provision of high quality needle and syringe
programmes. In June, we organised our first ever free training event for needle
exchange workers, with parallel courses offered on safer
injecting, overdose prevention, peer distribution, and
bacterial infections. Trainers from across the country were
brought to Liverpool to deliver to more than 80 participants
– and the event was kept free of charge thanks to the
generous support of Frontier Medical Group, Liverpool John
Moores University, and a number of exhibitors.
The feedback from the event was overwhelmingly
positive: all of those who left feedback said that they
would recommend future NNEF events to their
colleagues, and that they were able to access training
that they would otherwise not have been able to. As a
result, the NNEF will look to provide more training events
in the future – at locations across England – to support
needle exchange staff as much as possible in their
important, lifesaving work.
To find out more, join the forum at
www.nnef.org.uk/nnef_join.html – membership is free.
LIFE-SAVING MESSAGES
Nigel Brunsdon
was among the trainers at
the NNEF event. He shares key messages
from his workshop on preventing overdose
I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH
to be asked to run two half-day workshops on
promoting overdose prevention at the NNEF’s free training event. Although
drug services and needle programmes have always had a duty to reduce
drug-related deaths, this often has in practice involved little more than
asking someone if they have overdosed in the last four weeks, with very
little in the way of follow-up. Some services do go further, but staff training
around this is often just a small aspect of a wider training programme
rather than intensive overdose prevention work.
Training people in promoting overdose prevention
messages has to include a large amount of ‘myth-
busting’; both workers and people who use drugs
can have fixed ideas learned from their peers and
the media. Challenging these ideas requires
sensitivity and understanding.
For example, explaining to a group that walking
people around when they’ve overdosed won’t help
them. You’re likely to come across someone who
has done this in the past, and the person lived.
They may have gone though years believing they
saved someone’s life, and you have to explain that
not only did this not help, but that they might have
put the person at a greater risk of injury from falls
as well as increasing the overdose risk by delaying
the process of getting help. Imagine how you might
feel in that same situation.
Overdose prevention also has to be practical and
realistic; take for instance the recovery position.
Almost everyone I’ve trained has some idea of how
to put people into the ‘correct’ position. But how often does this kind of
training include coming across people who are not flat on their back with
their hands by their sides. Unfortunately people don’t always fall to the floor
in a neat and tidy way, they might be slumped over, face down, or even
wedged between furniture. If all we do is talk to people about artificially ‘tidy’
scenarios then they won’t be confident responding in real life situations.
During the training at the NNEF, one exercise was for people to develop
their own overdose education plans that could be incorporated into the kinds
of programmes they worked in. This might be a formal one-hour one-to-one
session, a group situation or even just small bite-sized chunks of information
that can be delivered while supplying sterile injecting equipment. When
developing this kind of plan, think about the resources you have – are you
going to give people handouts? What practical exercises can you run (have
you got access to a resuscitation doll?) and, of course, are there partner
agencies you can work alongside to deliver this?
Both the sessions at the NNEF event were very well attended, showing
that there is a real need for this kind of work from the point of view of the
workers involved. The last drug-related deaths figures showed more than 500
people died from heroin use. With other drugs added the figures are more
than 1,000 people, so this needs to be more of a priority than a couple of
questions on an assessment.
Overdose prevention is something that should be done at every stage of
drug service work, from brief interventions during needle sessions, right
though to relapse prevention overdose work in rehab situations.
Nigel Brunsdon is community manager at HIT and a harm reduction
trainer, www.injectingadvice.com
‘Training people
in promoting
overdose preven-
tion messages
has to include a
large amount of
“myth-busting”.’