Improving Calgary’s Methamphetamine Intoxication Management in Emergency Departments: Experiences and Perceptions of Patients, Allied Healthcare Providers, and Frontline Community Staff

Summary

Within the city of Calgary, and the province of Alberta, there has been a large increase in emergency department visits related to methamphetamine type drugs. Using methamphetamines can cause intoxication and the effects of this can include: increased energy, alertness, extreme happiness, enhanced sexual activity, long periods without sleep, an altered understanding of reality, and possibly anger, aggression or psychosis. In cases where people are intoxicated by methamphetamines and require immediate medical care, it is often difficult to transport these people to the emergency department, protect them from hurting themselves or others, or to provide care for these people. This may cause methamphetamine patients to receive poor care or feeling poorly about themselves or being hurt. It also may lead to care providers being hurt or feeling unhappy about their encounters with these patients.
This project is designed to gather the points of view, feelings and experiences of both providers (who either transport, protect or care for people who are intoxicated by methamphetamines during emergency department visits) and from methamphetamine patients themselves. We will give providers an online survey with both questions aimed to better understand how they feel about methamphetamine care in Calgary. We will also be interviewing past-patients of these methamphetamine-related emergency department visits about their perspectives and experiences about their care in Calgary. Our findings will be reported to Alberta Health Services to help them as they begin to update their management strategies of patient intoxicated by methamphetamines in order to keep both patients and staff safer and happier.
This study will possibly benefit people who use methamphetamines and providers who encounter them in the city of Calgary. With improved strategies based on findings from this study and others, the emergency department staff, other providers and patients will be safer and feel better, leading to a higher quality of life for everyone. These results may also be used to influence the way methamphetamine intoxication is managed across Canada and potentially be used to benefit health systems in other countries.