Theme: Models of Care Year: 2024
Background and objectives: Savoir Plus Risquer Moins (Know More Risk Less) is a research fund created by Elliot Imbert, inventor of the Stéribox®, the first injection kit distributed in France from the 1980s. Elliot Imbert quickly realized that distributing tools without explaining how to use them is not effective; The Savoir Plus Risquer Moins research fund is therefore setting up training in lower-risk self-injection, for which I am now responsible on French territory.
Description of the intervention: This training begins by reviewing the history and principles of harm reduction. It then analyzes and describes all the issues, steps and tools related to the injection. The differences between the types of filters, needles and syringes, the issues related to the use of sterile single-use equipment and hand washing, the strategies to limit the loss of products, overdoses, abscesses and viral contamination (Hepatitis and HIV) are thus explained. The training ends with handling the injection equipment, with the use of a mixture of starch and sugar imitating the texture of buprenorphine in order to be able to prepare a fake product in a sterile cup.
Evidences of the effectiveness of the intervention: Satisfaction and skills questionnaires are then distributed to participants, which allows us to note that the trained professionals consider themselves, at the end of the training, more capable of advising users on the equipment to use. This training, mobilizing therapeutic education strategies and scientific evidence, has therefore proven itself to improve the skills of users and professionals around self-injection with lower risks.
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