A doctor wants to random drug-screen the hospital staff:
“It sounds as if he’s accusing all the doctors here of being alcohol or drug addicts, or protecting others who are,” he said.According to the lawsuit filed Feb. 28 in U.S. District Court, Couch asked for all staff to undergo random drug and alcohol testing in 2002. He claims that one former doctor, not named in the lawsuit, failed to diagnose life threatening conditions, possibly because of “an ongoing problem with substance abuse.”
Related posts:
- Chantix for alcohol abuse?
- Substance abuse in anesthesiologists
- Suing for an infiltrated IV
- Hand wipes and alcohol abuse
- OxyContin deception
- Perception
- For doctors, a malpractice lawsuit is personal
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 27 comments }
There is hardly any place that doesn’t do random drug testing on their employees. Why should Physicians be excluded? Actually, when one thinks about it, it makes perfect sense. They are in charge of human life, they certainly need to have a clear head. More so than aolt of other professions. Also, they have easy access to all sorts of things that the normal person doesn’t have..It doesn’t matter if they become offended when asked to provide a drug sample, we all do to some degree.
It would be interesting to know what other professions/occupations are routinely randomly drug tested. Are lawyers randomly tested? Judges? Politicians?
Just asking.
In most instances, members of a hospital staff are not employees.
The community hospital I used to work in, the evening nurse manager was so drunk all the time, one night I had to take care ofher after she fell over and hit her head while on the job. I complained about her. She still works there, I don’t. I was labeled “troublemaker” when I complained about her.
The post directly above this is Unbelievable!!!
Fatigue causes more medical errors than substance use.
The only reason I would oppose random testing for physicians, nurses and others is for the same reason it is a bad idea for society in general.
There are false positives and careers and live are destroyed by just one falsely reported postive test. These can be due to technique error, sample swaps, ingestions of natural substances that cross react with drug screens.
Drug tests cannot differentiate between a substance legitimately in someone’s body and substances not part of a legitimate medical therapy. Random drug testing requires the person subject to testing to divulge otherwise protected health information.
I did have to undergo pre-employment screening with one hospital. Because typical screening tests are cheap and poorly specific I did not wish to risk a preliminary false positive ever being documented prior to the definitive molecular identification with HPLC or mass spec. I insisted on only these definitive tests. With some foot dragging over wishing to avoid a precident, the hospital agreed.
A poppy seed bagel will light up any urine dipstick screen for opiates because the compounds are sufficiently similar. The definitive tests will determine exactly which molecules are present.
I suppose that mandatory testing gives one’s enemies an easy weapon; just spike someone’s coffee, or leave a tray of ‘brownies’ in the break room. Not too far fetched really; if a person cannot kick the habit, the best thing to do might be to hide in plain site; make everyones drug screen light up positive. The boss is more willing to accept the explanation that the screen was a false positive if it was his screen.
Gasman, When I have had drug screening for employment reasons I have received written instructions not to consume anything containing poppy seeds prior to the test. I also had to list (or take with me for the nurse to verify) all prescription medications as well as any herbs, or vitamins that I take.
Your right, a positive test on a clean person, could ruin their life. I think the point someone was making is that most of us have to endure this to gain employment, so why should your profession be excluded? Partcularly, when Drs. have easy access to drugs. Surely you don’t deny that there are users in the medical profession?
“I think the point someone was making is that most of us have to endure this to gain employment, so why should your profession be excluded?”
For the same reason we can park wherever we want…we have privileges in this society because of our what we do for a living…did you train for 7-12 years after college to do whatever it is you do? Have you ever saved a life? I doubt it…
You can park wherever you want?
CJD
Has every physician saved a life, by the way? Or is that just the qualifier for good parking?
Anon 7:14,
Oh come on…When I worked for the Govt. they let me park any where I chose to park, but I still had to drug test.
So, you admittedly believe that you are above the rules of all other professions? No, I didn’t go to school for 7-12 years, just a lowly 4 yr. degree for me. Does that mean I’m more apt to be a drug addict than you?
As a matter of fact I have saved a life, but not in the role of Physician…I should have thought of that when my boss demanded we all get drug tested. “NOT ME, I saved a life once! I have lifetime immunity from all drug testing because this Doc. on a website says so!” Tell me, what the h*** that has to do with someone taking drugs?
You should not be so judgemental to every person you speak too..Who are you to “assume” anything about people you don’t even know?
You know what happens when you get to assuming to many things!
And one more thing..Most people take credit (or blame) for the things they say..I sign my work, why don’t you??
anon 7:14,
If you really are a physician, why dont you just quit for the sake of the profession. Let me guess, you probably have a vanity plate that declares in some way you are an MD.
“As a matter of fact I have saved a life, but not in the role of Physician…”
I’d love to hear about that one.
If you’re so brave, don’t just post under a generic first name like cathy shared by millions of others, why don’t you give the name of this weblog to your doctors and tell them what name you post under…I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
Ummm….I still haven’t heard whether lwayers, judges and politicians are required to submit to random drug tests.
Not unless it relates to the job we’re applying for. In house counsel, govt. jobs, maybe federal judgeships and clerkships.
CJD
why don’t we make President Bush submit to a drug test…and he has even used drugs in the past. He has the ability to start a nuclear war and kill millions, he should be tested everyday.
Anon 10:15,
Oh for goodness sake….My Drs. know I have a website, one even provids me information and various sites to visit…If they can find my site then they can find other comments as well.
There are some on here that try to convince us that you are probably really 10 different people. But to those who view this site alot and read all your comments we recognize your tone. I know that you are one of a kind. There really is noone, and I mean noone, who is like you..You are the ultimate unique Physician of all time. The same as many of you recognize your Attorney friend when he forgets to sign his post, you are likewise obvious.
You really want to hear about how I saved lives? Heres one example..When I was in my 30s and 40s I worked at a manufacturing company(moonlighting)around very high voltage electricity every night. I was part of the “First Responder’s Team.” Initally, we were just called “emergency aids” but later we became first responders..Yes, we actually went to school and were trained to do this…
One night we had an emergency, involving that high voltage electricity and a male employee. When I arrived at the site, a caring coworker was just getting ready to grab ahold of her friend and try to pull him to safety…My first priority was this woman. She had to be knocked to safety! We all know what would have happened to her if she had been successful in her recovery attempts..She knew it also, but emotions were ruling her at that moment, not knowledge..
There are other stories but I wont share them with you.. Why do you have such mean negative feelings for people? Most important, why are you in a profession that requires helping people? Do you not get any satisfaction from your work at all? Is it all bad?
you really are nuts…
I don’t believe she’s nuts I also don’t believe your any doctor. She’s right we do know that your the guy who calls everybody names and that your the one who hates his job.
I did hate my job until I put myself in your place…an old fart sitting at home writing a blog about my arthritis…now I feel alot better about myself! Thanks!
Don’t pay any attention to this guy, he is just trying to get you mad and cause an upset. just ignore him and maybe he will go away!
Randy
Actually, I’m another doctor who has been accused as being the blogger who hates everybody. I haven’t posted on this stream yet. So you know there’s at least two of us. I just want to know how the other guy gets free parking everywhere. I get tons of tickets.
“Also, they have easy access to all sorts of things that the normal person doesn’t have”
That is a misconception by the public. With the exception of anesthesia, docs do not have general access to narcotics. Ask any pharmacy. Now I suppose we can write scripts and get kickbacks but that is a whole other issue and leaves a “paper” trail (which hangs the doc that does it).
There is hardly any place that doesn’t do random drug testing on their employees.
It would be interesting to know what other professions/occupations are routinely randomly drug tested.
As far as I know from personal experience, private technology companies don’t randomly test employees, but they do it one time as part of hiring process. Except for high risk areas the cost of testing a few thousand people routinely will be higher than the amount of money it’ll save the company, so why would they bother? Even if the test itself is cheap, multiply the price by thousands and add all of the bureaucracy a big company would require… They can easily fire anybody for bad performance. Where I work they rank people based on performance and two consequitive years in bottom 5% is an almost guaranteed dismissal.
I’d imagine places that consider random testing are those when mistakes can truly bad consequences. Who cares if a software developer is stoned, everyone expects software to have bugs (ok maybe except for some critical software that flies airplanes, but it is probably tested very thoroughly)…
Some places choose not to random drug test because they fear losing some of their best employees. Sad but true.
False positives DO occur…my family is living through the experience. My physician husband has a short lived history of substance abuse (6 weeks during an acute major depression)over 2 years ago. He is randomly tested (full toxicology) twice weekly. He was the first to be subjected to the random monitoring by the provincial medical board and the punishment was very harsh – it included suspensions of over two years while they figured out how to handle it.) He has not abused anything since Jan 04. However we have had our 4th false positive. The first was for cocaine (a drug he’s never been anywhere near) – likely due to an antibiotic. A negative hair test cleared him. This month we have three false positives for cannabis – likely due to high dose anti-inflammatories. Only problem is, we can’t find credible information on the interference of ibuprofen in the gc/ms process. He was taking very high doses of ibuprofen, then toradol for a massive dental infection and continues to take the stuff due to osteomyelitis of the mandible. He had a hair test done this week (results pending). Local “experts” say hair testing is not as good for cannabis. End of the story, he’ll likely be forced to surrender his license to practice medicine on Apr 26th because we can’t prove he didn’t do it.
Comments on this entry are closed.