Drug Addict Dr. Bravely Tells All!

I am mystified why a Dr. would bare his soul like this, but it is very enlightening. I am not even going to give you a synopsis because you need to read it for yourself; Pain Medicine News What I am going to do is show a copy the graph that this article uses... Please note the percentage of physicians (especially anesthesia) who KNOW that a collegue is impaired, yet do nothing. The patients don't know because they are given Versed, so that they can't recall that the physician (or others) was behaving peculiarly... Is this why my surgeon did such a bad job? Is this why he was an hour and a half late? Is this why he was such a b#$%^&d in the OR and sweet as pie when I saw him in his office? I guess he figured that with the huge amounts of Versed in my system that I would be unable to make this kind of comparison? Not looking good, but Dr. Freeland who wrote this article is refeshingly candid. I hope you enjoy the good Dr.s honesty even as it alarms you!

By the Numbers: Substance Abuse and MDs

Table. Specialties of 904 Addicted Physicians Admitted to 16 State PHPsa Physician Patients by Specialtyb % Family medicine 20 Internal medicine 13 Anesthesiology 11 Emergency medicine 7 Psychiatry 7 PHP, Physicians’ Health Programs a Source: DuPont RL, McLellan AT, White WL, Merlo LJ, Gold MS. Setting the standard for recovery: Physicians’ Health Programs. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2009;36:159-171. b Including only specialties that represented >5% of total physician patients.

17	The percentage of physicians with personal knowledge of a physician colleague who was impaired or incompetent to practice medicine.
67	The percentage of those physicians who reported the impaired or incompetent colleague to the proper authorities.
26	The percentage of anesthesiologists who had personal knowledge of a physician colleague who was impaired or incompetent to practice medicine.
67	The percentage of those anesthesiologists who reported the impaired or incompetent colleague to the proper authorities. Source: Results of a survey, published in July 2010 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 2010;304:187-193), of 1,891 practicing physicians in the United States, representing anesthesiology, psychiatry, cardiology, pediatrics, general surgery and internal medicine.