About the Course

Prescription drug abuse has become a national epidemic, primarily around opioids (painkillers). Additionally, students are at an increased risk of abusing stimulants, such as Adderall. To help keep you, your friends, and our community healthy and safe, we are offering this online course as a way to educate our community members around the risk associated with prescription medication abuse, and how to help prevent misuse and abuse from occurring.

The Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention course takes ~30 minutes to complete and covers the following:

• Opioids, stimulants, and depressants
• Proper prescription drug use, storage, and disposal
• Brain and body: the science of addiction
• Simulations: refusal and bystander skills
• Debunking common myths

Answers to all questions asked throughout the course are anonymous and cannot be traced back to a single user. Please answer questions honestly as your participation helps us Strengthen the health and well-being of Northwestern.

Accessing the Course

All requests to take this course should be emailed to Kevin Meier at kevin.meier@northwestern.edu by following the instructions below.

Individuals

If you are an individual interested in taking this course, please email kevin.meier@northwestern.edu with your name and NU email. Once entered into the course, you will receive an invitation email to begin.

Groups

For groups of students who wish to take this course, please email a single spreadsheet to kevin.meier@northwestern.edu with the following information in separate columns: First Name, Last Name, NU Email. Once the assignment is created for your group, each student will then receive an invitation email to complete the course.

Questions or Concerns About Substance Use?

Please contact Health Promotion and Wellness at hpaw@northwestern.edu .

Help for Technical Difficulties

Should you experience ANY difficulties or require support when accessing the program, the Online Support Center is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Simply click on “Help” from the drop-down in the upper right corner of the screen. You do not need to be logged into the course to access the Support Center. From the sign in page, click “Support” in the top right corner.

Saint Louis University's Department of Public Safety offers multiple crime prevention and emergency preparedness courses to the SLU community. These courses are all taught by officers who have attended specialized training to become certified instructors in the subject matter.

Our department’s goal with each course is to raise awareness, provide information and help develop skills on how to keep themselves and those around them safe.

Interested in registering for a course? Contact us. 

Campus Safety Presentation

DPS provides a safety presentation to help SLU community members better understand our department, the services we offer and basic safety tips to help you navigate our campus.

Upon request, DPS will hold training sessions that consist of a PowerPoint presentation and a Q&A session. These training sessions are offered to departments, organizations, clubs and any other groups within the SLU community. The instructors of this course will not only go over our basic safety tips, but will also help provide information that would be applicable towards the group they are teaching.

Fire Extinguisher Training

Upon request, Public Safety will set up a training class where the St. Louis Fire Department teaches and demonstrates for the class on how to properly operate a fire extinguisher. The fire department will the allow each participant to operate the fire extinguisher.

Rape Aggression Defense System (R.A.D.)

R.A.D. is a program created for women that teaches realistic, self-defense tactics and techniques. This 12-hour course covers awareness, prevention, risk reduction and avoidance while progressing to the basics of hands-on defense training.

This course is dedicated to teaching women defensive concepts and techniques against various types of assault by using easy, effective and proven self-defense tactics. R.A.D. is taught by certified instructors and offered free of charge by the department.

Instructors

Defense and Personal Safety (D.P.S. with DPS)

D.P.S. is a basic self-defense course that was created and is taught by DPS officers. The program was designed as a basic self-defense course and requires no previous experience in self-defense training. This three-hour long course will teach participants different techniques of blocking, striking, and various other hand-to-hand combat tactics.

Instructors

CPR-AED Training (not currently offered)

Be prepared by learning how to save lives and handle emergencies by attending the CPR/AED/First Aid course. This program was created by the American Heart Association and is taught on the SLU campus by certified and experienced DPS instructors. This hands-on class is four hours long, and upon completion of the class, each participant receives a CPR certification card.

This class costs $10 and is limited to six class participants at a time to allow for the best possible hands-on experience.

Currently, DPS is not offering CPR-AED training courses.

Instructors

Active Violence Response Training

This course, was created to prepare people on how to respond in an active violence situation. The training is taught by instructors who focus on empowering people to make good survival decisions should an attack occur.

From increasing the use of sepsis bundles to streamlining diagnostic test ordering to improving patient satisfaction with consent procedures, medical students at the Ohio State University College of Medicine develop projects to solve real-world patient safety risks in clinical settings.

This coursework is part of the college’s four-year health system science studies focused on safety, quality and how different healthcare professions and specialties collaborate to Strengthen patient care.

Rather than having health professionals wait to learn certain concepts until later on in their careers, some medical schools are beginning to incorporate patient safety into curricula so graduates enter the workforce more fully prepared.

“Why wait for a physician or a nurse or someone to be in practice for years before allowing them to take a course like this or receive certification?” said Dr. Frank Filipetto, dean of the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. ”Let's not have them develop bad habits.”

However, medical schools must convince students and academic leaders that patient safety is worth prioritizing. Schools looking to implement safety curricula face barriers including student disinterest and uneven internal support for devoting resources to these initiatives.

“The biggest challenge was convincing students that they needed this curriculum and because it’s a change, and they don't see other medical schools doing this,” Filipetto said. “I’ve had students say, ‘I don't need to learn this.’” To counter these objections, professors explain how studying safety advantages students by enhancing their skills, in addition to benefiting patients, he said.

The Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine is among the innovators in this area. The school decided a few years ago to emphasize safety so students understand the importance of preventing harm, Filipetto said.

“My vision back then was: We really need to change the way healthcare is being delivered in this country because we have significant issues with medical errors and patient safety issues that result in death,” he said.

With assistance from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and SaferCare Texas, the college first developed a curriculum and a pilot program to prepare 10 students for an IHI exam to qualify them for a Certified Professional in Patient Safety designation. Nine students passed on their first try, exceeding expectations, Filipetto said.

The Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine refined its safety curriculum and now requires a two-week course and the exam during the third year of medical school. Ninety-eight percent of graduates depart with patient safety certifications, according to the college.

Students learn about the foundations of patient safety, including hospital leadership, a culture of reporting adverse events, and measuring and improving performance. They also study how to identify root causes of safety failures to inform solutions.

More than 5,000 individuals have earned Certified Professional of Patient Safety designations since the exam debuted in 2012, said IHI Vice President Patricia McGaffigan. Since the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine began its program, its graduates represent about 10% of those who have passed the test, she said. The IHI is seeking additional academic partners to expand its efforts, she said.

At the Ohio State University College of Medicine, health systems science students take a four-year course completing IHI quality and patient safety modules and engaging in group work to apply the lessons to clinical scenarios, said Dr. Philicia Duncan, program director of the school’s applied health systems science course.

During their final year, students engage in quality improvement projects that identify areas where care could be improved and work with faculty and others on quality and safety initiatives such as a campaign to reduce vaccine hesitancy.

The university ultimately wants safety incorporated into the entire curriculum, Duncan said. “That's almost looked at as a niche area,” she said. “Once it's demonstrated that patient safety and quality is more a fabric of medical education and medical practice, then that would help the program's success.”

The University of Michigan Medical School takes a similar approach that is personalized for students based on their interests and future specialties, said Dr. Jawad Al-Khafaji, director of patient safety and quality improvement. Students also work on projects emphasizing measures to prevent adverse events, he said.

“We've had quite a few very impactful projects that ended up changing some of the practices even here at the University of Michigan” and at Veterans Health Administration facilities, said Al-Khafaji, who practices internal medicine at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

Medical school graduates who are certified in patient safety are attractive to employers because so few physicians have been formally educated on the subject, Filipetto said. Newly minted doctors with this background are prepared to perform duties such as participating in patient safety and quality committees, he said.

Trying to recruit first year medical students to join the patient safety elective over an area like global public health is difficult because most have no idea of what patient safety and quality improvement are or why they are important, Al-Khafaji said.

In addition to persuading students, advocates for patient safety education face skepticism from academic leaders, said Lillee Gelinas, director of patient safety at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine.

“The two most common questions we get—not just from medical schools, but other health profession schools—are: ‘How much does it cost and where does it fit in the curriculum?’” Gelinas said. “We can't answer that. The schools have to look at their own curriculum and where it fits. But the main message is: You can't just sprinkle the Topic of safety and quality into other courses.”

Academic leaders often are reluctant to borrow best practices from other schools or from third parties, and contend they must create safety programs in-house from scratch, said Stephanie Mercado, CEO of the National Association for Healthcare Quality.

“One of the big misconceptions that I've experienced working with academic organizations is that they think that there's a benefit to having a custom program built by their organization,” Mercado said. “They believe it represents a secret sauce, that they are bringing something to the market that no one else has," she said.

“Programs who are trying to develop this de novo are going to miss the opportunity to have their students meet their peers where they're at,” Mercado said. “They need to be speaking the same language, the same vocabulary, the same toolkit, and we do that by aligning to a standard.”

This strategic approach supports Member States as they develop sustainable infrastructure and capability to train key personnel to ensure the safe use of ionizing radiation. It outlines adaptable and flexible measures so that evolving training needs can be met.

A Steering Committee for Education and Training in Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety, comprised of Member State experts, advises the IAEA on the implementation of the strategic approach.

Among the main objectives of the strategic approach is facilitating the development and implementation of a national strategy for education and training for radiation, transport and waste safety, in line with the IAEA General Safety Requirements Governmental, Legal and Regulatory Framework for Safety.

The IAEA, its Member States and IAEA regional training centres work together to implement the strategic approach.

Each has a specific role:

• The IAEA develops and provides tools to build competence in Member States. This includes training material, syllabi and guidance material on establishing a national strategy;
• The IAEA regional training centres provide training events in collaboration with the IAEA. They also disseminate and promote IAEA-developed guidance on establishing a national strategy for education and training; and
• Member States establish national strategies that include the development of education and training programmes in line with the IAEA’s safety standards.

By Adrienne Cooper
Senior Events Manager, Food Safety Summit

The 2023 Food Safety Summit, the premiere event for thousands of food safety professionals, has announced five pre-event certificate courses to be offered on Monday, May 8, 2023 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois. Two FSPCA Certificate courses, Preventative Controls for Animal Food Training and the Foreign supplier Verification Program, have been added to three returning courses including HACCP Training, Food Fraud Prevention, andCertified Professional – Food Safety (CP-FS) review course. The following are descriptions for these five pre-Summit courses: 

• NEW – FSPCA Preventive Controls for Animal Food Training – The Current Good Manufacturing Practice, Hazard Analysis, and Risk-Based Preventive Controls for Food for Animals regulation (referred to as the Preventive Controls for Animal Food, or PCAF rule) is in Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 507 (21 CFR Part 507). The PCAF rule is intended to ensure safe manufacturing, processing, packing, and holding of animal food products in the U.S.  This 20-hour class is held over 2.5 days and includes an exam.   Certificate of completion presented by FSPCA.

• NEW – FSMA FSPCA Foreign supplier Verification Program – As audits are on the rise and regulations are being strongly enforced, it is more important than ever to know how to implement the requirements of the Foreign supplier Verification Programs (FSVP) for Importers of Food for Humans and Animals regulation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and this workshop will do just that. This course is designed for U.S.‐based importers who meet the definition of “importer” in the FSVP rule, which includes those who own or are the consignee of food at the time of entry or, if no owner or consignee exists, the U.S. agent or representative of the foreign owner. It is also for others who have an interest in ensuring that the requirements of the FSVP rule are met, including brokers, exporters, foreign suppliers of food that will be exported to the U.S., persons/business owners who currently buy food from foreign sources, and representatives of foreign governments. This two-day course includes a certificate of completion presented by FSPCA.

• Certified Professional – Food Safety (CP-FS) Credential Review Course – This course was developed by industry experts from across the country to provide participants with a review of the knowledge and skills necessary to pass the CP-FS Credential Exam. It also provides a solid overview of food safety standards and practices. This course provides the knowledge and skills necessary to help ensure safe food in any retail environment – as a quality assurance or quality control manager, a facility manager, a food-safe chemical supplier, or as a regulatory inspector/investigator.  This two-day review course is presented by the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA).

• Food Fraud Prevention Workshop and Certificate Course – Food fraud prevention is one of the most urgent and misunderstood food industry topics. This workshop begins with an overview of the food fraud problem before quickly shifting from “how to catch food fraud” to “how to prevent food fraud from occurring in the first place.” Building upon that overview, the afternoon will shift to conducting the food fraud vulnerability assessment. This assessment is a requirement for the Food Safety Certifications such as BRC, FSSC22000, IFS, SQF and others. These standards are based on the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) benchmark. The workshop ends with a focus on the Food Fraud Prevention Strategy and full implementation of a management system. This is a one-day course with a certificate provided by the Food Fraud Prevention Think Tank.

• HACCP Training –  This course covers information needed for writing a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) Plan as required by USDA for FSIS-regulated meat, poultry, or egg products or for those producing foods under GFSI-format 3rd party audits requiring a HACCP certified individual to oversee their food safety plan. Participants will gain information for creating, implementing, and documenting a HACCP program.  This 20-hour class is held over 2.5 days and includes an exam.  Certificate provided by the International HACCP Alliance.

The pre-Summit courses include breakfast, lunch and breaks, books/training material and certificate. Multi-Day course registration includes access to the Food Safety Summit education sessions, exhibit hall, and networking functions during non-course hours. To take advantage of early bird pricing, click here, to register before Friday, March 31, 2023. 

The 2023 program will offer a wide range of courses impacting industry professionals including root cause analysis, leadership skills, advancements in sanitation, traceability, AI and data gathering, and much more. On Wednesday and Thursday from 10:30 am–2:30 pm, there will be dedicated Exhibit Hall time for attendees to learn about new solutions, engage in small group discussions in the Community Hub, attend free presentations by food safety experts in the Solutions Stages and in the Tech Tent, enjoy lunch, and network. For access to the full program and for attendee registration, visit  https://www.food-safety.com/food-safety-summit. 

(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News,click here)

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Feb 08, 2023 (Heraldkeepers) -- The report has introduced a new report entitled Fraud Prevention for EcommenceMarket which is a widespread summary of the market that consists of a detailed description and analysis based on the various types of products available in the market and also has the different end-users. The report includes the impact analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report presents a complete and analytical look at the various companies that are working to achieve a high market share in the global Fraud Prevention for Ecommence Market. The report incorporates the various drivers as well the factors impeding the growth of this market during the forecast period. The report provides the opportunities in the market and their substantial impact on the major players dominating the market.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Safety One Training is offering training courses in tower safety and rescue this spring in cities nationwide. The training is available in three versions: authorized, competent and train the trainer. 

Here is where the training will take place:

• February 2023: Littleton, Colorado and Poughkeepsie, New York
• March 2023: Littleton, Colorado; Lathrop, California; Topeka, Kansas; and Spokane, Washington
• April 2023: Littleton, Colorado; Dayton Ohio and Dallas, Texas
• May 2023: Littleton, Colorado; Billings, Montana; and Portland, Oregon

In addition to these classes, the company is also offering training in competent rigging, wind turbine safety and bucket truck. 

For more information, visit the Web site. 

The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I) and Cornell have partnered to launch an initiative to develop best practices for golf courses regarding the use of water resources and discharge of nutrients and chemical pesticides, aimed at the 200+ golf courses in Western and Central NY.

With help from Cornell, NYSP2I will work with golf courses to become more sustainable by providing educational materials and technical assistance. Informational webinars, podcasts, and on-site technical assistance videos will be made available throughout 2022, and some funding opportunities may be available to help implement these best practices.

Environmental Results Program Webinar Series

An EU-wide shortage of qualified mechanics is creating “extraordinary pressure” for the National Car Test (NCT) service while a “driver availability” issue is hampering plans for the redesign of the Dublin bus network, according to a briefing document prepared for Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan.

The document, drafted in December and published on Tuesday, outlines how the department is continuing to progress three public transport “megaprojects” – BusConnects, Dart+ and MetroLink – and states that “assuming timely planning approval from An Bord Pleanála” as well as other matters, construction work on the MetroLink could start in late 2025 and it could begin operating in the early 2030s.

[ Driving examiners ‘put at risk’ after ruling that cars without NCT can be used for tests ]

[ Average NCT wait times still rising amid confusion over ‘free tests’ ]

The document notes backlogs in the NCT system have been receiving “prolonged media and political scrutiny” since the start of last year.

“The contractor is providing additional vehicle inspectors from its Spanish operation,” the report notes, while the Road Safety Authority (RSA) has approved a pilot scheme to use additional inspection staff for automated test elements, and non-EU testers are receiving training.

There will be no reduction in the quality of the tests being carried out, according to the report, and the department has received assurances from the RSA that the appointment of additional resources will not result in the loss of any existing jobs.

Investment in public transport, which was €524 million in 2020, is expected to grow to €851 million this year, while from 2021 to 2025 it is envisaged that the equivalent of 20 per cent of the 2020 transport capital budget – approximately €360 million annually – will be invested in walking and cycling infrastructure on a whole-of-government basis, according to the report.

[ Motorists entitled to free NCT tests over delays, but none have been offered, TD says ]

[ NCT mechanics reject plan to hire auxiliary staff in effort to tackle backlog ]

Hundreds of villages and rural areas are to be connected to the national bus network as part of a five-year Connecting Ireland plan. Priority is being given to areas where “the population and transport demands have increased due to the requirement to house Ukrainian refugees in rural locations”.

In order to achieve the “ambitious levels of emissions reduction required in transport”, base demand is among the matters that have to be addressed, according to the report.

A National Demand Management Strategy, to be developed this year, will consider a broad range of measures and their sequencing and timing, with the measures mentioned in the report including the removal of free workplace parking, increased parking charges, congestion and road-user charges, and increased fossil fuel prices.

On aviation, the report notes that the pandemic caused airline passenger numbers to plummet globally but that a accurate projection by Eurocontrol envisaged Irish passenger numbers returning to 2019 levels in 2023 and throughout Europe the following year. “Recovery is ongoing, and at a pace that surpassed initial predictions,” according to the report.

“While aviation’s contribution to economic development has long been acknowledged and the importance of connectivity for an island nation is well-understood, the imperative to act to reduce our emissions across all sectors is also fully recognised,” the report said.

On the introduction of a tax on aviation fuels, the report says “progress continues to be very slow at EU level with varying views between member states.”