if narcan doesn’t harm people who aren’t ODing, why do paramedics wait before administering another dose?

Question

The only reasonable explanation I can think of is ability

In: Other

Answer 1

We as medics will wait because.. 1. We need to make sure it’s an opioid overdose, and not a different type of substance, so we need to see if the patient is responding to the first dose given. 2. We don’t actually want to completely bring them out of the ‘high’ we just want to counteract the overdose enough that they are breathing adequately but not too much that they come up swinging at us due to brain hypoxia(symptoms of hypoxia is confusion and aggression). And 3. like any medication, there’s preferred therapeutic levels we need to reach and it’s best practice and more likely better efficacy if we queue the dose every 5 minutes, versus just giving them a whole bunch of doses all at once.

Hope this helps!