Opinion of health professionals and drug users before the forthcoming opening of the first drug consumption room in Paris: a quantitative cross-sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundOn the brink of the opening of the first French drug consumption room in Paris, the general opinion of the local involved health care professionals and drug users was not known. The objective of this study was to determine their expectations and to search for influencing factors.MethodWe carried out a quantitative cross-sectional study. A multiple choice questionnaire was proposed to the surrounding willing general practitioners (GPs) and pharmacists, to the emergency doctors of Lariboisière hospital, and to the professionals of the harm reduction facilities and their drug users (PWUD). For each question, there was a choice between seven answers, from “− 3” (very negative impact) to “+ 3” (very positive impact). The influence of the characteristics of each group on its mean answers was explored by Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, and Spearman’s tests.ResultsThe median expectations among the groups of responding GPs (N = 62), other health care professionals (N = 82), and PWUD (N = 57) were mainly positive. They thought that the drug consumption room (DCR) would improve the health of PWUD, reduce their at-risk behaviors, would not increase drug use or drug dealing in the neighborhood, and would reduce nuisance in the public space. Only the group of GPs expressed that the DCR could decrease the quietness of the neighborhood, and only the group of PWUD had higher expectations that the DCR would decrease the number of arrests and the number of violent behavior. GPs’ expectations were significantly better in terms of health improvement of PWUD and reducing their precariousness if they had a previous experience in addiction medicine (Mann-Whitney, p = 0.004 and p = 0.019), with a longer practice (Spearman’s rho, p = 0.021 and p = 0.009), and if they were currently prescribing opioid substitution treatments (Mann-Whitney, p = 0.030 and p = 0.002).Among non-GPs, those who were working in addiction medicine centers had significantly better expectations than pharmacists, and the professionals of the local emergency department had intermediate expectations.ConclusionsHealth care professionals and drug users had a positive opinion of the to-be-created Parisian drug consumption room. Experience in addiction medicine influenced positively health professionals’ expectations.

Feasibility, acceptability, concerns, and challenges of implementing supervised injection services at a specialty HIV hospital in Toronto, Canada: perspectives of people living with HIV

“…Some feasibility studies have tried to expand on their inclusion criteria by also talking to those who are at risk of initiating, often injection, drug use [33] or those who injected/used drugs in the past [34]. Acknowledging PWUD perspectives in SIS feasibility research is crucial to ensure that the development of harm reduction services reflects current needs and encourages empowerment among these key stakeholders [53]. For instance, McNeil et al (2016) in their study of recently discharged against medical advice PWUD show how hospital-based harm reduction programs can promote patient-centered care for this target population [19].…”

“…The opinions of PWUD regarding SIS have been typically investigated using either large quantitative surveys [33,46,48,53,61,62,102,[104][105][106] or to a lesser extent using qualitative interviews or focus groups [36,43,47,110]. Fewer SIS feasibility studies take a mixedmethods approach, with many of these encompassing grey literature/research reports [35,41,103,[111][112][113].…”

Indicators of Drug-Related Community Impacts of Open Drug Scenes: A Scoping Review

“…1). Seven cross-sectional studies were judged to be of sufficient methodological quality [7,[22][23][24][25][26][27]. The eligible publication rate was 1-2 articles annually.…”

“…In some studies, drug use in public has been evaluated/ described through the frequency of smoking crack in public places [33,43], or drug use in public [16,22,23,29,35,36], and injection in public [5,27,37,38,41,42]. According to the number of eligible articles in the study, besides disposal of drug-related paraphernalia, drug use in public was the main indicator of DRCIs.…”

Nascimento, vida e morte de uma política pública: uma etnografia do programa De Braços Abertos

“…Dos CAPS municipais sairiam os profissionais para compor as equipes de CAPS na Rua, somados a outro equipamento localizado no bairro da Vila Mariana, centro-sul da cidade, mas que trabalhavam na região central, ligados ao Projeto Quixote, especializado no atendimento infantil. O engajamento por parte dos funcionários municipais, com experiência prévia na região, foi positivo, à semelhança do que ocorreu na implantação de equipamentos voltados à redução de danos em usuários de crack em Paris (França) 40,41 .…”