Improving Injection Techniques to Prevent Skin and Soft Tissue Infections in People Who Inject Drugs

Abstract

Skin and soft tissue infections serve as significant complications of injection drug use. The vast majority of these complications come from lack of awareness of how to reduce infections including proper injection technique and appropriate site preparation. Harm reduction has been a well recognized modality to reduce serious complications such as accidental overdose or serious medicla complications like seizure or stroke. The goals of this project was to educate subjects actively injecting IV drugs on proper antiseptic technique to reduce injections. Patients were provided instructional videos on how to safely prepare and inject sites and their knowledge was assessed by pre and post-tests both immediately after watching the video then 4-6 weeks later. Of the 23 participants there was an 11.2% increase in knowledge pre vs post-test. At 6 week follow up there was a 7.81% improvement in scores indicating a degree of knowledge retention. Given the short time frame authors were not able to ascertain the impact on the incidence of soft tissue infections within the participants.