Objectives:The present opioid epidemic and abuse of fentanyl in the United States has led to an increased risk of exposure to first responders. Law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services are receiving misinformation on fentanyl health and safety risks and this has led to miscommunication. Understanding the risk perceptions and knowledge of first responders regarding fentanyl can help identify training gaps.Methods:A 15-item 6-point Likert scale online questionnaire was developed and distributed to firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical technicians, regarding perceptions of fentanyl exposure, and additional questions concerning knowledge. The online questionnaire was sent to 15 associations of national and New York State first responders with 3 associations acknowledging and distributing the survey.Results:Of the 247 participants, 187 served New York State; 92 worked in law enforcement; and the other 95 worked in either fire, emergency medical service, or both. New York State first responders generally agreed with expert risk perceptions and knowledge of fentanyl exposure in the pilot study. Items pertaining to using hand sanitizer, selecting glove type, and dermal exposure to fentanyl had lower agreement with expert beliefs.Conclusions:Risk perceptions and knowledge could be used to evaluate fentanyl response training among first responders.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Worker Training Program piloted an Opioids and the Workplace: Prevention and Response training tool and program in 2019. The pilot trainees ( N = 97) were surveyed ( n = 27) and interviewed ( n = 6) six months posttraining, and those who downloaded the training tool from the Worker Training Program website ( n = 87) were surveyed ( n = 19) and interviewed ( n = 1) two to six months postdownload, to evaluate the impact of the training program. Workplace policy and program-level actions were reported less frequently than individual-level actions by trainees, except for planning and conducting training and education. Barriers to taking actions included not being able to make changes on their own without supervisor support and lack of upper management support and approval. We found some evidence that the Opioids in the Workplace training program and materials contributed to helping workers introduce policies and programs related to opioids within their workplace or union.
As mass COVID-19 vaccination programs roll out across the country, we are potentially faced with compromising workers’ health for the sake of the broader public health, as it relates to occupational exposure to contaminated needles and syringes. We have the opportunity to provide recommendations that advance protection of workers through the industrial hygiene hierarchy of controls, especially in light of the twentieth anniversary of the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act. Specifically, greater focus on institutional controls that can dictate the safety culture and climate of institutions that roll out COVID-19 vaccination programs, while maintaining careful focus on preventing sharps injuries and blood exposure. In addition, we provide suggestions for the role that engineering controls, such as devices with sharps injury prevention features play in protecting workers from exposure to bloodborne pathogens, as well as the importance of ongoing injury incident surveillance.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.