Judgments and negative thoughts toward drug users, especially those who overdose, are common even among people whose job it is to save lives.

So the University of Toledo College of Medicine designed an overdose training course for medical students that extended beyond the normal nuts and bolts of how to administer care.

The college of medicine is part of the UT Health Science Campus, the former Medical College of Ohio.

RELATED VIDEO: Heroin overdose simulation at UT

“It’s not our place to judge, and I think as health-care personnel, we really need to break this stigma and we need to surpass this,” said Tia Hornish, a nurse who helped organize the overdose simulation at the medical school Monday.

Students training to be doctors, nurses, and emergency responders participated in the simulation at which an EMS crew was called to an overdose victim’s home. The students were not informed what kind of patient they would have to treat ahead of time, so they could respond and make decisions in real time, Ms. Hornish said.

The EMS students found the patient, really an anatomically correct medical dummy, unresponsive and with needle tracks in his arm, said Nathan Marcinkowski, a third-year medical student who is the team leader.

IN PICTURES: Overdose simulation at UT College of Medicine

The patient was given Narcan, a heroin antidote also known as naloxone, and taken to a mock emergency room where the medical students took over. When patients are given Narcan at home, they can become overly aggressive and the drug can create other medical complications, Mr. Marcinkowski said.

“You are going through acute withdrawal after getting the Narcan, so that’s some of the things we’re worried about,” he said. “The things we saw in our simulation are the result of getting Narcan like going into v fib [ventricular fibrillation], when your heart gets out of rhythm and starts pumping like crazy.”

Mr. Marcinkowski stressed how important it is for people who get the overdose drug to go to a hospital right away. Now that naloxone is widely available and sold in drugstores, he is concerned that if it's administered by family or friends, the person who overdoses might try to skip formal medical care.

“Narcan’s a very short acting drug, and a lot of the heroin opiates that they’re injecting are long term, so the drug effects are a lot longer than the Narcan dose,” Mr. Marcinkowski said.

The antidote, he said, is “an antagonist. It pretty much just blocks the receptors that the heroin attaches too, so when you block it, it only blocks for a certain amount of time and then after a while that’s gonna wear off and the drug is still in your body.”

After the hands-on training ended, the students and instructors went to a nearby auditorium where about 50 other medical, fire, and EMS professionals and students had watched their work on a video feed. Discussion that followed included the normal debriefing about what went right and wrong, but there was an extra component.

Matt Bell, co-founder of Team Recovery, a group of recovering heroin addicts and anti-drug advocates, shared his struggle as a former addict.

A St. Francis de Sales High School graduate, Mr. Bell was a UT baseball player when he became hooked on pain pills after shoulder surgery in 2007, then switched to heroin when the pills got too expensive and his dealer offered him a free sample.

“They know you’re gonna come back, and they say this one's gonna keep you higher. It’s gonna last longer. It’s cheaper but you have to use a needle,” Mr. Bell said.

After years of using, he managed to stay off heroin for about two years, but relapsed in 2014.

“The very first time I used, I overdosed, and it was $5 worth of heroin and it almost killed me,” he said.

Mr. Bell told the students the simulation they went through was similar to how he was treated after his overdose. After days in a medically induced coma he came around and was released.

“It’s sad to say, but the very first thing I did when I left the hospital is I went to use again,” Mr. Bell said.

He is now clean and volunteering with other former addicts to try to help users and their families.

Mr. Bell urged the students and health professionals to resist the natural tendency to grow passive and uncaring as the numbers of overdose victims coming into hospitals continues to rise.

“This happens to good people. I can’t say that all addicts are good people, but I know for a fact that all of them are not bad people,” he said.

Contact Marlene Harris-Taylor at: mtaylor@theblade.com, 419-724-6091, or on Twitter @marlenetaylor48.

First Published March 1, 2016, 5:00 a.m.