This post was originally published on June 26, 2014.
We’re the first to admit it: we loooove a heartwarming story of a policeman done good. (Especially because there have been more and more disturbing news stories over the past couple years in which a cop has done, well, the opposite of good.) So we really like our latest installment of AfterPartyHeroes.
Thinking Fast
Here’s the scoop: A couple weeks ago, a Georgia police sergeant named Nathan Ernst was the first officer to arrive at the scene of an emergency call from a local home. When he arrived, he discovered a 24-year-old unconscious woman who was having a seizure due to an opioid overdose. Sergeant Ernst beat out the EMTs in arriving on the scene, and thankfully he knew to move quickly. He administered a dose of a medicine called naloxone into the woman’s nostril, thereby saving her life with his swift judgment and even swifter action.
It was the first time Ernst had ever used naloxone on an OD victim, but it was clear, within just one minute, that she “stopped seizing and started becoming more stable,” he recalled to Business Insider. After the woman awoke, the EMTs took over; she was deemed to be in stable condition at the hospital later that day.
Naloxone Saves Lives
Naloxone has been in the news lately for its impressive reputation for single-handedly counteracting the nasty and frequently lethal effects of an opioid overdose.
Because the number of people dependent on heroin more than doubled between 2002 and 2012, the need for easy access to naloxone is greater than ever. And one of the great things about the drug is that it can be administered by both regular folks and police officers, making it a much simpler and quicker course of action than sitting around waiting for the paramedics to show up. Plus, the drug has an impressively high success rate; as of February, the police department in Quincy, Mass. had a 95 percent success rate when using naloxone to reverse an overdose.
Here’s hoping that more and more law enforcement offices across the country will begin both educating and equipping their officers with this lifesaving drug—it could make a significant impact in the overall number of opioid-related deaths in this country. Good work, Sergeant Ernst!
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