Highland pharmacist saves drug overdose victim
https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a616003.html
What should I know about storage and disposal of this medication (Naloxone) ?
Keep this medication in the container it came in, tightly closed, and out of reach of children. Store it at room temperature and away from light, excess heat and moisture (not in the bathroom). Do not freeze the naloxone nasal spray.
I guess that they don’t teach these new PharmD’s (doctors of pharmacy) that medications have a required/suggested storage temperature range and the “glove box” of a vehicle will not stay in that range. While there is no “perfect way” to store these naloxone kits in a vehicle…at the very least… you carry them in a small foam cooler… at least keep the temperature swings to a minimum. What good is having a rescue medication readily available… if you are storing it in such a way that could cause its potency to deteriorate ?
She’s only been a pharmacist for a few months.
But when a woman overdosed in the City of Poughkeepsie Rite Aid parking lot, 23-year-old Sara Kissinger sprang into action, administering two doses of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone and reviving the unconscious woman.
“I’m still shaking a little bit,” said Kissinger, who spoke to the Journal about 20 minutes after she revived the woman on Tuesday afternoon. “It definitely was scary.”
It was unclear what drug the woman had taken.
Kissinger, a Highland resident, just graduated from the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in May. She’s been a Rite Aid pharmacist since August.
And she never had to administer naloxone before Tuesday, after a man rushed into the pharmacy and told employees his friend had overdosed in the parking lot.
The man told staff the woman called him right before she overdosed — “he showed up and found her like that, unconscious in her car,” Kissinger said.
Rite Aid technician Erica Pinckney asked Kissinger if the pharmacy had a supply of naloxone.
The medication works by temporarily reversing the effects of illicit or prescription opioids. A person has the chance to regain consciousness and breathe normally.
But while Rite Aid pharmacies do distribute naloxone without a prescription in New York (among other states), Teleflex Medical just issued a recall on its intranasal atomizer device, which is used in the naloxone delivery system.
The naloxone medication “inside the kit is safe and can work to reverse an overdose,” said Dutchess County Deputy Medical Examiner Kia Newman, in a statement last week. “If the atomizer in your kit has a defect, it may stream the medication as opposed to spraying it as an atomized mist. Giving the naloxone with a possibly defective atomizer is still better than giving nothing at all.”
Approximately one-third of the kits distributed are estimated to be affected by the recall, the county announced.
So Kissinger was worried about the effectiveness of the pharmacy’s naloxone.
But she remembered she had some in her car.
Kissinger used to intern at a pharmacy that participated in a needle exchange program, “so I had kits that I keep in my glove box just in case,” she said. “I was trained about two years ago, so I’m thinking, ‘I hope I remember how to do this.'”
After grabbing the kits — two intranasal naloxone pens — “I went over and found the woman lying back in the car,” Kissinger said. “Her face was blue and she looked unconscious. We found that she was breathing and she still had a heart beat, but she was completely just unconscious.”
After Kissinger administered one dose of naloxone, “it seemed that she was breathing better… but she didn’t quite wake up. We were splashing water on her, we were trying to wake her up.”
So Kissinger administered the second dose.
“Her eyes opened and she sat up,” Kissinger said.
Emergency medical technicians arrived and Kissinger filled them in on the steps she had taken. The woman was taken to MidHudson Regional Hospital.
“I believe everything turned out OK, fortunately,” Kissinger said. “I’m just happy that the day turned out the way it did and I hope she gets to spend Thanksgiving with her family. I hope this is a wake up call for her.”
Nina Schutzman: nschutzman@poughkeepsiejournal.com, 845-451-4518 Twitter: @pojonschutzman
Filed under: General Problems
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