Sudbury paramedics, hospital roll out new approach to opioid overdose calls
CBC
Greater Sudbury's paramedical services and the city's hospital, Health Sciences North are partnering up to offer more options to people with opioid use disorders.
They will soon launch a new pathway for patients that involves offering suboxone in the field and transportation to the hospital's addiction services unit instead of the emergency room.
Suboxone is a medication that helps reduce cravings and withdrawal symptoms.
With a patient's consent, it could be administered after one has received naloxone, a life-saving opioid overdose reversing drug.
Kevin struggles with an opioid use disorder and lives downtown Sudbury. CBC is not using his full name because of the stigma around drug use.
He started treatment with suboxone and methadone in the last few months in an effort to never have to repeat what he calls 'the worst withdrawal ever' that came after receiving naloxone.
"I mean, you have to go to the bathroom and everything comes out of you, it feels like your organs are touching the water," he said.
"I'm talking squirming out of your clothes, can't sit still, snotty face, sweating like crazy… It's absolutely brutal, at least 12 hours of hell but it feels like months."
Kevin says the initial suboxone treatment, followed by regular doses of methadone, has helped him stop using opioids for now, after years of struggling with addiction.
"I don't even crave it," he said.
The new option offered by emergency paramedical services and Health Sciences North is meant to provide more tools to people who have experienced overdoses.
The province has recently directed paramedics to administer suboxone in the field instead of waiting for the patient to arrive at the hospital.
Melissa Roney, deputy chief of paramedics for Greater Sudbury Paramedic Services, is hoping this new tool will ultimately help patients access the hospital's withdrawal management centre.
"With the liberal use of narcan [naloxone] in the community, we were encountering a lot of patients in opioid withdrawal," she said, adding that these patients are at an increased risk of dying.
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