Understanding the impact: Safer Supply Program Models and Nursing Practice

About this event:

RNAO’s Mental Health and Substance Use Program team invites you to attend the third and fourth webinars in our Harm Reduction Series, in partnership with its Mental Health Nurses Interest Group and Community Health Nurses’ Initiatives Group, as well as the Harm Reduction Nurses Association, Moms Stop the Harm and the National Safer Supply Community of Practice, focused on background and implementation of safer supply.

Harm reduction is a foundational component of nursing practice. Harm reduction is a philosophy that has a set of core principles and values, such as justice, dignity, compassion and autonomy — that shape how we work. It involves policies, programmes and practices that aim primarily to reduce the adverse health, social and economic consequences of the use of substances without necessarily reducing consumption.

Prescribed safer supply is a harm reduction approach that involves providing pharmaceutical grade drugs of known quantity and quality to people with opioid use disorder who are at high risk of overdose and other harms. This approach has become highly politicized with a lot of misinformation circulating in the media, despite proven positive impacts for people.

Join us to learn about the evidence around safer supply programs as part of a harm reduction approach and analyze the role of the nurse in this work.

The objectives of this webinar are to:

• learn about prescribed safer supply program models in Ontario
• analyze the role of nurses in safer supply programs
• understand the impacts and implications of safer supply in the context of nursing practice
• apply and integrate new knowledge of safer supply prescribing into nursing practice
• learn about the benefits, challenges and next steps for prescribed safer supply programs

Presenters and credentials:

• Marysia (Mish) Waraksa, NP and clinical lead, Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre Safer Opioids Supply Program
• Marlene Haines, RN, PhD candidate at the School of Nursing, University of Ottawa
• Sophia Coulter-English, RN