In cases that go wrong, they are highly sought to be expert witnesses against the referral source.
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Excuse me, but since when are PSYCHOLOGISTS CONSIDERED experts regarding opium prescriptions?
This is a major flaw. If you want the GI doc to testify fine, but the psychologist has no business testifying in court as to his opinion on the opium. They might as well have me up there talking about it, because my opinion would be just as valid.
Not being experts has never stopped physicians from opining outside of their areas of expertise. Didn’t reconstruct the auto accident? Have no idea as to how much force was invovled in the collision? Have no idea as to the requisite manner in which force must be applied to cause a single event cervical disc herniation? Yet, the accident, “to a reasonable degree of medical certainty” caused the disc herniation! Hah!
Well, to be fair, they may not be able to prescribe, but a psychologist with a Ph.D. might have a hell of a lot more training and expertise in psychopharmacology and addiction than your typical GI doc. It would depend on when and where they trained and what their field was.
“but a psychologist with a Ph.D. might have a hell of a lot more training and expertise in psychopharmacology and addiction than your typical GI doc.”
Uh wrong. Psychologists get ZERO TRAINING IN ANY MEDICATIONS WHATSOEVER. In fact most of them dont believe in using meds and claim that therapy is superior to any medication available.
Psychologists are experts about therapy and even mental illness diagnoses, but they dont know jack about pharmacology treatment. They dont teach that in PHD psych programs and its illegal for psychologists to prescribe any medication whatsoever.
Which bring me back to my original point. This psych obviously had no trianing or experience in medications or pharmacology, so who is this fool to testify on it? If he was just testifying on the mental illness thats one thing, but testifying on medication therapy is way out of his scope of practice
The gastroenterologist should have referred the patient to a psychiatrist instead of a psychologist. A psychiatrist wouldn’t stab another physician in the back like that.
I was taught in pharmacology (and I just took Step 1, so I’m not far removed from it) that while one can develop tolerance to the *euphoria* of narcotics, one doesn’t develop tolerance to the constipation! So if he was getting opium for the diarrhea, he shouldn’t have been needing increased doses to adjust for tolerance.
–lowly 3rd year med student
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