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Emergency medical services (EMS) workers need no lecture from us about the impacts of the opioid epidemic. These workers have been on the front lines of trying to keep people alive, and we have great respect for the critical job they do every day.
We also hope they will universally respect the new law passed last year that requires them to be trained on the administration and dispensation of naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug that has helped and can continue to help save lives.
Maine Emergency Medical Services has developed an hour-long training course on the distribution of naloxone kits. But alarmingly, as recently reported by Maine Public, only 50 percent of EMS workers were compliant with this new law, LD 981, as they approached the July 1 deadline.
“I know that for all of those clinicians that have taken this training, it was a priority,” Robert Glaspy, an Emergency Medical System program coordinator, told Maine Public. He was asked why some providers hadn’t taken the training so far.
“That’s a question that the EMS clinician themselves have to face,” Glaspy said. “And they have to answer that as to why.”
The “why” almost doesn’t matter. What does matter is that naloxone can save lives, the Legislature had the good sense to make this training mandatory for these jobs, the state’s emergency medical system has a course available, and all of these workers should be taking it to comply with state law.
Overdoses continue to tragically claim many lives in Maine and across the country, but there is at least some hope as statewide overdose deaths saw an encouraging decline last year. We see many policy actions contributing to this improvement, including increased investment in treatment and prevention resources. A piece of this puzzle, though certainly not a cure-all on its own, is the increased availability of naloxone.
Last year, more than 600 people died of overdoses in Maine. There were more than 9,600 total overdoses. This means that reversals in the community, in emergency departments, with police and with EMS services prevented thousands of overdoses. Clearly, increased access to naloxone is helping to save lives.
“The Legislature has taken steps to make sure naloxone is readily available to law enforcement, medical personnel, and members of the public,” Republican Sen. Rick Bennett of Oxford said in March of last year when testifying as a co-sponsor of LD 981. “Having EMS employees trained on dispensing this life saving drug only makes sense.”
We agree, just as we agree with the Bangor mother who lost her son to an overdose and the local lawmaker who spearheaded the effort to pass this legislation last year. State Sen. Joe Baldacci, a Democrat from Bangor, credited Tonya Dickey for bringing forth the idea of this new law.
“I am hoping you will support this as it means very much to me. My son, Tyson, struggled with addiction due to medical issues since he was a freshman in high school, which required the doctors to prescribe pain medication,” Dickey told lawmakers last year. “Fast forward through our ups and downs he had been clean going on three years, when he needed surgery. The doctors prescribed pain medication, and the day after his prescription ran out he bought some thing that ended up being fentanyl. I believe had this bill been in place prior to Tyson’s relapse, he would still be here.”
Baldacci rightly said at the time that providing this training for EMS personnel “can better prepare them for saving more lives across our state for those who are suffering from an overdose.” But with that training available, EMS workers also need to actually take the training.
“All first responders should be required to carry, use and be trained how to properly administer Narcan,” Dickey continued in her testimony last year. “Not only statewide but hopefully nationwide. If this bill passes, I request it be named in honor of my son, and called Tyson‘s Law.”
Once again, we know that EMS workers don’t need to be reminded about the toll that overdoses have taken across Maine. But, sadly, it does seem that roughly half of these workers need a reminder about the new state law requiring this training. We hope that those not in compliance will take the available course without delay, and help save lives in the name of Tyson and all the Mainers we’ve tragically lost to overdoses.
