Opioid Overdose Training: 81 UAMS Students Learn Naloxone Use

Students at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences practiced reversing opioid overdoses Monday in the UAMS Library's Active Learning Center, working through naloxone administration in teams of peers. Eighty-one students took part in the session, which covered opioid use disorder, fentanyl, counterfeit pills, and the reach of opioid misuse in Arkansas.

The Office of Interprofessional Education ran the training across UAMS' five colleges and graduate school. Thirteen student educators led the naloxone instruction and discussions on overdose prevention, emergency response, and what health professionals can do about the crisis. Participants left with a naloxone kit and a drug identification kit supplied by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin. The identification kit holds a fentanyl test strip, rubber gloves, a drug disposal bag, and a card for spotting potentially counterfeit medications.

A press conference earlier Monday marked the 20th training held under Griffin's One Pill Can Kill initiative. Griffin has sent drug identification kits to 15 college campuses in the state. UAMS Chancellor C. Lowry Barnes, M.D., and Josh Hankins of Little Rock Recovery spoke alongside him.

Griffin said educating young people about illicit opioids and giving them tools to act protects Arkansans. Barnes said the office and UAMS are not simply distributing Narcan, the commercial name for naloxone. "The goal is to teach people what to do in an emergency, so they can potentially save a life," Barnes said. Barnes also named Stephanie Gardner, Pharm.D., Ed.D., UAMS provost and chief strategy officer, and Michael Mancino, M.D., program director of the UAMS Center for Addiction Services and Treatment, for their work on the opioid threat in Arkansas.

Hankins, an alcohol and drug counselor at Little Rock Recovery, has led more than 80 community classes in three years for the UAMS Arkansas Naloxone Education Training program. He recalled his own use of opioids as a youth as "a piece of the puzzle that made me feel comfortable around people, that made me feel whole." "My whole generation was wiped out because of opioid abuse. I had 39 friends, people that I grew up with that I will never see again, fentanyl took away all of that," Hankins said. "If naloxone was a thing during that time period, I'd like to think a lot of those people would be alive today."