Objective: To describe common components of medical amnesty (MA) policies and examine how MA policies differ across institutions. Participants: 50 U.S. colleges and universities with current MA policies. Methods: A checklist was developed to compare and assess the campus MA policies of 50 institutions. Descriptive statistics, chi-square, and regression analyses were used to examine common policy components and differences across types of institutions. Results: 40% of policies did not include a purpose statement. 42% of policies had no mention about how to use the policy. 48% did not mention restrictions on amnesty. 32% did not mention follow-up actions. 24% of policies mentioned extending amnesty for additional person(s) present. There were no significant differences in policy components across school characteristics. Conclusions: Many policies lacked detail, highlighting the need for guidelines and best practices to develop MA policies. Future research could examine the effects of these policy components on help seeking intentions.

Objective: Examine students\' awareness of medical amnesty policies and the influence of policy awareness on the expected consequences of bystander help seeking in alcohol-related emergencies among student-athletes and non-athletes. Participants: 1,012 college students. Methods: Spearman\'s correlation and chi-square tests were used to examine accuracy in awareness of amnesty policies. Nominal logistic regression was used to test the relationship between amnesty policy awareness and expected consequences of bystander help seeking. Results: About 25% of students were unsure if their school had an amnesty policy; of these students, 67% attended schools with such a policy. Students who were unsure about the presence of amnesty policies were more likely to expect serious negative consequences of calling for help for both non-athlete peers (B = 1.152 p < 0.001) and student-athlete peers (B = 0.887 p = 0.001). Conclusions: Greater attention is needed to how amnesty policies are implemented on college campuses, including how they are communicated to and interpreted by student-athletes.

Medical Amnesty/Good Samaritan (MAGS) policies, which eliminate legal charges when students call 9-1-1 for excessive drinking, have been implemented with the goal of reducing barriers to accessing Emergency Medical Services (EMS). This study investigated the impact of MAGS policy implementation on EMS calls on campus and if that EMS call volume could be used to measure policy success. The aim of this study was to compare the prevalence of alcohol-related EMS calls before and after MAGS implementation at a single large public university campus. Methods: A retrospective review of all 9-1-1 calls to on-campus locations was conducted using patient care records (PCRs) from a collegiate EMS agency responding exclusively to on-campus 9-1-1 calls. Calls were excluded if the PCR was marked \"incomplete\", were outside the 2015 CBEMS response zone boundaries, or if patient age was <15 or >25 years old to ensure analysis was targeting the on-campus student population. The incidence of alcohol-related 9-1-1 calls was compared between one academic year (AY) prior to (pre-MAGS, AY2015) and two years after MAGS implementation (post-MAGS, AY2016/17). An alcohol-related 9-1-1 call was defined as an EMS provider primary or secondary impression of \"Alcohol, Alcohol Intoxication, or Alcohol Ingestion\" or a call in which the patient explicitly admitted to alcohol use. Relative risk (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were used to describe the results. Results: Over the three-year study period, the collegiate EMS agency responded to 2440 calls of which 1283 met inclusion criteria. 58 calls were excluded for being incomplete, 227 were outside the original boundaries and 872 were outside the defined age range. Of those calls, 351 were pre-MAGS and 932 were post-MAGS. Of the total 9-1-1 calls, 127 (36.2%) were related to alcohol pre-MAGS and 327 (35.1%) were related to alcohol post-MAGS policy implementation. The relative risk of a 9-1-1 call being made for alcohol-related issues after MAGS implementation was RR = 0.97 (95% CI 0.83-1.14; P = 0.713). Conclusion: Implementation of a MAGS policy was not associated with a significant change in the number of alcohol-related EMS responses. It is unclear if these results reflect ineffective policy implementation or a general reduction in on-campus alcohol consumption. However, using EMS call volume as a marker for policy success and quality improvement offers an innovative tool through which EMS agencies can provide valuable feedback to other system stakeholders.

Medical amnesty policies (MAPs) at universities attempt to encourage students to seek emergency medical care by reducing disciplinary sanctions. This study analyzed how a MAP affected requests for emergency medical help to a collegiate-based emergency medical services (CBEMS) agency for alcohol-related issues.
This before-and-after study analyzed CBEMS call data for the 6 semesters prior to and after MAP implementation. Extracted data included patient demographics, dispatch time, and requests for advanced life support (ALS) resources.
Following MAP introduction, increases were observed in alcohol-related calls/day in the fall semesters (0.84 vs. 0.93; p < 0.01). The median time of calls decreased; 1:20 a.m. versus 12:59 a.m. (median difference 21 minutes, p < 0.001). Finally, ALS was requested less often (9.0% vs. 3.7%; odds ratio 0.39; p < 0.01).
MAP implementation at a university with a CBEMS is associated with a higher call volume, requests for service that occur earlier in the evening, and reduction in ALS requests for alcohol-related emergencies.

The occurred death of a convict in prison, police custody cell or in a hospital always attracts public attention and can be considered as a complex phenomenon. The aim of this study is to evaluate the data obtained from autopsies performed to the custody and prison deaths in Istanbul and to discuss the possible solutions by comparing with the literature. It is also aimed to discuss the postponement of the sentence and presidential amnesty facts in Turkey. Deaths of inmates, which occurred in hospitals, prisons, prison medical rooms, police vans and police custody cells between 2010 and 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey were included in the study. Totally 125 cases were found and 98.4% of them were male. Natural deaths accounted for a great majority of deaths (83.2%). The most common natural cause was cardiovascular diseases. Unnatural deaths accounted for 15.2% of the deaths. Death reason cannot be determined for 1.6% of the cases. More than half of the cases (56%) were died at the hospital, 34.4% were died at the prison, 4% of them at the police van, 3.2% were died under police custody and 2.4% were died at the prison medical room. Moreover, twelve of these cases had applied to Third Specialization Board previously for postponement of the sentence or Presidential amnesty. Totally five of these cases found suitable for postponement of the sentence. Prison conditions should be improved, prisoners with chronic diseases should be examined periodically and if appropriate their sentences should be postponed until they heal.