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Willingness to access an in-hospital supervised injection facility among hospitalized people who use illicit drugs

British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS; BC Centre for Disease Control

Background Despite the reliance on abstinence-based drug policies within hospital settings, illicit drug use is common among hospitalized patients with severe drug addiction. Hospitalized people who use illicit drugs (PWUD) have been known to resort to high-risk behaviours to conceal their drug use from healthcare providers. Novel interventions with potential to reduce high-risk behaviours among PWUD in hospital settings have not been well studied. Objective The objective of the study was to examine factors associated with willingness to access an in-hospital supervised injection facility (SIF). Design Data were derived from participants enrolled in two Canadian prospective cohort studies involving PWUD between June 2013 and November 2013. A cross-sectional study surveying various socio-demographic characteristics, drug use patterns and experiences was conducted. Setting Vancouver, Canada Measurements Bivariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to explore factors significantly associated with willingness to access an in-hospital SIF. Results Among 732 participants, 499 (68.2%) would be willing to access an in-hospital SIF. In multivariable analyses, factors positively and significantly associated with willingness to access an in-hospital SIF included: daily heroin injection (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.90; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.20 – 3.11); having used illicit drugs in hospital (AOR = 1.63; 95%CI: 1.18 – 2.26); and having recently used a SIF (AOR = 1.53; 95%CI: 1.10 – 2.15). Conclusions Our findings highlight the potential of in-hospital SIFs to complement existing harm reduction programs that serve PWUD. Moreover, an in-hospital SIF may minimize the harms associated with high-risk illicit drug use in hospital.

Downtown-Eastside (Vancouver, B.C.)

Text

2017-01-23

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/60182

Ti, L., Buxton, J., Harrison, S., Dobrer, S., Montaner, J., Wood, E., & Kerr, T. (2015). Willingness to access an in-hospital supervised injection facility among hospitalized people who use illicit drugs. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 10(5), 301–306

Reviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/