In 2014, the Westchester County Commissioner of Health, Sherlita Amler, M.D., M.S., called upon the Center for Disaster Medicine in the School of Health Sciences and Practice’s Institute of Public Health to partner in training police officers to administer this spray, sold under the brand name Narcan.
treat and prevent future addiction. Because Narcan is key to preventing death by overdose, this training is one of the first tools the students receive to save someone’s life,” she says. “In addition, the training starts the dialogue about the problem we’re having with prescription painkiller addiction in our county. Before they even write their first prescription, we want our students to think about that balance between controlling pain and creating addiction.”
“Our focus on emergency medicine has placed us at the front lines of opioid addiction to help those in the acute stages of overdose; we have a vast amount Katharine A. Yamulla, director of experience training doctors, of the Clinical Skills and paramedics and police officers,” Simulation Center, calls the Michael J. Reilly, Dr.P.H. ’10, College’s partnership with the M.P.H., director of the Center health department “the perfect for Disaster Medicine, associate marriage of training and resourc— D. Douglas Miller, M.D., C.M., M.B.A., professor of environmental health es, campus and county.” Dean of the School of Medicine science and associate professor of “Within a month of starting emergency medicine, says. “Our medical school, students acquire expertise at the Center, and the the basic skills to save someone’s credibility of the College as a whole, allows us to offer life,” says Yamulla. “It has been an honor to collaborate with advice and counsel to train non-medical first responders on medical professionals throughout Westchester County, who are lifesaving interventions.” also dedicated to raising awareness on this important subject.” With the joint leadership of the Center for Disaster Medicine and Jennifer Lindelof, SOM Class of 2020, said the Narcan training the County Health Department, Westchester County became a alerted her to the national health crisis that’s also prevalent in participant in the New York State Opioid Overdose Prevention Westchester, where opioid-related deaths have doubled over the Program. last decade from 29 to 59. “Prescriptions for opioid medications have skyrocketed over the “We’re just starting to hear about prescription painkillers being last decade and increased fourfold since the 1990s,” says Dr. so dangerous, even in an affluent community like ours,” she says. Sherlita Amler, also an associate professor of pediatrics in the “This training opened my eyes to the extent of the problem. You NYMC School of Medicine and a distinguished lecturer in the never know when you’ll come across someone who’s unresponSchool of Health Sciences and Practice, who leads the trainings. sive due to possible opioid overdose.” “Between 2005 and 2014, the number of opioid-related deaths in New York increased by 150 percent.”
“This is a chronic condition, not a psychological weakness or moral failing.”
As part of Westchester’s Safer Communities Initiative, the Narcan training and kit aim to empower first responders, school nurses, substance abuse counselors and others to help reverse or arrest the effects of opioids, stopping a potentially fatal overdose. Residents who complete the free training sessions are given a free Narcan kit and remain certified to administer the spray for two years. Due to this initiative, in 2016 the School of Medicine’s Clinical Skills and Simulation Center was immediately able to expand its Basic Life Support (BLS) certifications for first-year medical students to include the county’s formal trainings on Naloxone and Opioid Reversal Training. These sessions teach students at the very start of medical school to recognize the signs and symptoms of opioid overdose, and to respond by assembling the needle-less syringe to spray Narcan into the nose. Adding future medical students to the lines of defense “gives them the opportunity to be part of the solution,” says Dr. Sherlita Amler. “Our goal for medical students is to have them recognize,
HUMANISM AND HEALTH
The topics of pain management, prescriptions, overdose and addiction has always figured in the School of Medicine curriculum. But in light of new CDC guidelines and the AAMC pledge, a working group of faculty drawn from the specialties of primary care, neuroscience, pharmacology, anesthesiology and pain management has worked to connect the topics with each other, flagging intersections throughout the curriculum. In addition to first-year training, second-year clinical simulations and a fourth-year elective in pain management will sustain discussion and awareness. “Pain management cross-cuts all disciplines, and lies at the heart of humanism: treating every patient with compassionate care that places his or her conditions, and complaints, at the center of every discussion,” says Jennifer L. Koestler, M.D., senior associate dean for medical education. “By building themes into a big picture of holistic health, we’re making sure our students ask the right questions of patients to inform and guide their decisions. When a public-health issue comes up, we want our students to be sensitized New York Medical College
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