Paramedics overwhelmed by drug overdoses
VICTORIA — The reality of the fentanyl epidemic is brutal, says Victoria paramedic Tamara McNay, describing the scene of a drug overdose: The person is unresponsive, covered in vomit, with a needle sticking out of their arm. Sometimes, their breathing has stopped for so long they are in cardiac arrest.
They are on the brink of death — and it is B.C. Ambulance paramedics’ job to bring them back to life.
But McNay, regional vice-president for the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C. union, said paramedics in Victoria do not have the resources to deal adequately with the spike in drug overdoses.
“We are literally going from call to call to call,” she said. “We go to overdoses every day, multiple times a day.”
Between January and August, B.C. Ambulance paramedics on Vancouver Island responded to 2,019 suspected overdose calls — almost as many as in all of 2015.
According to the B.C. Coroners Service, fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, has been a factor in 61 per cent of the 499 overdose deaths that happened between January and August this year. The most recent numbers indicate there were another 56 deaths in the province in September, for a total of 555 — including 107 on Vancouver Island and 44 in Victoria.
Paramedics are seeing more patients who require higher levels of care as a result of fentanyl, said John Deakin, an advanced life-support paramedic with 27 years of experience, including 17 years in Victoria.
“We’re responding to a higher number of these drug overdoses, and they tend to be sicker when we’re attending to them.”
Sometimes, Deakin said, paramedics treat the same person several times in a day.
All ambulance crews and 46 fire departments across B.C., including the Victoria Fire Department, carry naloxone. The life-saving antidote, sold under the brand name Narcan, reverses the effects of an opioid overdose.
Island paramedics administered naloxone 488 times between January and the end of August — already four more times than in all of 2015.
While the province has dispensed thousands of naloxone kits, McNay said it’s like putting a bandage over a gaping wound.
“Narcan is great, but it’s temporary,” she said. “These people need intervention. They need hospital treatment.”
With a potency 50 to 100 times that of heroin, a few grains of fentanyl can kill.
Victoria firefighter Ryan Ayre recently had a call where it took eight shots of naloxone to pull a man back from the brink of death.
It typically takes one shot of the opioid antidote to reverse the effects of a heroin overdose. “But now it’s two doses or three doses or more,” Ayre said. “I just think people don’t know how much they’re taking and the strength of it is knocking them way down the ladder.”