Delivery of Take Home Naloxone in Police Custody Suites – a Clinical Audit
NHS Lothian has today published their clinical audit titled ’12 minutes to save a life; Delivery of Take Home Naloxone in Police Custody Suites – a Clinical Audit’. In Scotland, police custody healthcare has for several years been commissioned by the NHS. This clinical audit presents the findings collated between January 2016 and July 2017, where police custody nurses based in the Forth Valley region provided 92 detainees with take-home naloxone.
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist which can temporarily reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Naloxone can be supplied in a ‘Take Home Naloxone’ Kit and people at risk of opiate overdose, can be trained to administer Naloxone where an opiate overdose has taken place. A similar programme of training and provision in Scottish prisons has contributed to between a 20% and 36% reduction in the number of drug-related deaths following release from prison.
The clinical audit demonstrates that ‘Take Home Naloxone’ is an intervention that can be facilitated by healthcare professionals in police custody healthcare settings in as little as 12 minutes on average.