Driving performance assessments for benzodiazepine receptor agonist-related impairment: a scoping review protocol.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this scoping review is to identify, map, and characterize the evidence for assessments that measure driving performance in people taking benzodiazepine receptor agonists. INTRODUCTION: Benzodiazepines and Z-drugs are widely prescribed for the treatment of anxiety disorders and insomnia even though they are not recommended as an initial treatment for these indications. Benzodiazepine and Z-drug use is associated with an elevated risk of traffic accidents, and guidance documents instruct patients to consult with their health care providers for instructions on how to safely operate a motor vehicle while consuming these medications. However, little is known about the assessments that measure driving performance regarding the extent and length of impairment from the consumption of the individual benzodiazepines and Z-drugs. INCLUSION CRITERIA: Eligible studies will include participants who are new, intermittent, or chronic users of benzodiazepines and Z-drugs. No exclusions will be applied regarding the health status of participants or whether their benzodiazepine and Z-drug use is for an approved indication as indicated by government agencies (eg, Health Canada) or practice guidelines. Studies that examine the consumption of a benzodiazepine and Z-drug in association with the operation of a motor vehicle (real or simulated) with direct or indirect objective or standard subjective measures or indicators of impairment while operating a motor vehicle will be considered. METHODS: Embase (Elsevier), MEDLINE (Ovid), and PsycINFO (EBSCO) will be searched as sources of published studies. Only studies published in English will be included, and there will be no limit on dates of publication. After screening the titles and abstracts of identified citations, two independent reviewers will retrieve potentially relevant full-text studies and extract data. Data will be presented in diagrammatic or tabular form accompanied by a narrative summary.

Resilience support to enhance positive health outcomes for police officers in five Anglosphere nations: a scoping review protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Law enforcement involves exposure to threatening situations and traumatic events that place police officers at risk for negative physical and mental health outcomes. Resilience support, among other elements of training, may help mitigate these risks, yet little is known about which aspects of resilience support help officers achieve better health and quality of life outcomes. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This review will consider all literature that examines the links between resilience support, physical/mental health and quality of life outcomes for police officers in five Anglosphere nations: Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. This review will include all literature (including those that show null or negative links) involving any public policing agency that has a formal rank structure and includes a localized, uniformed emergency response function. Resilience support may include, but is not limited to: tools, policies, models, frameworks, programmes and organizational features that seek to promote positive, physical/mental health and quality of life outcomes at three levels of resilience: (1) readiness and preparedness, (2) response and adaptation, (3) recovery and adjustment. Peer reviewed and grey literature examining resilience support since 2000 that focuses on police officers are eligible for inclusion. Databases/sources to be searched will include: PsycINFO, Academic Search Premier, CINAHL, Public Affair Index, Campbell Collaboration, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, Business Source Complete, Scopus and Google. Retrieval of full-text, English-language studies (and other literature), data extraction, data synthesis and data mapping will be performed independently by two reviewers, following Joanna Briggs Institute methodology. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethics approval is not required for this scoping review, and the literature search will start in November 2020 or upon acceptance of this protocol. The findings of the scoping review will be available [April 2021] and will be published in a peer reviewed journal.

Using ambulance data to reduce community violence: critical literature review.

BACKGROUND: Previous work has demonstrated that much violence requiring medical help is not recorded by the police. Sharing emergency department data on victims of violence is associated with reductions in community violence and is well established throughout the UK. We undertook a critical literature review to determine whether sharing ambulance data was useful to identify violence hotspots and offered unique information for violence prevention. METHOD: A search of the major medical and criminological databases was undertaken using search terms related to the ambulance service, violence and assault, as well as data collection. The search was conducted within the NICE Evidence, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Criminal Justice Abstracts, Scopus and National Criminal Justice Reference Service databases, along with the websites of various relevant institutions. RESULTS: Overall, 36 papers were identified by abstract scanning and bibliography search, of which 10 were considered relevant. A further nine papers were detected in the grey literature, and two were considered to be useful in providing evidence for use of ambulance data in violence surveillance. Two of the identified papers were interventional studies, and the other 10 were observational studies. DISCUSSION: Although the standard of evidence was generally low, most studies demonstrated that ambulance services detected a substantial proportion of assaults that were not recorded by the police or the emergency departments. We identified only two interventional studies, but they were of low quality. Although the interventional evidence base is currently weak, ambulance data provide a unique source of information about the epidemiology of community violence and have the potential to improve current violent crime surveillance methods.