Press Release

Growing Concerns Over Medical Professionals Abusing Drugs on the Job

By: HR ProFile via Marketwired News Releases
May 12, 2014 at 14:05 PM EDT

Medical Professionals Abusing Drugs on the Job Is the New Plague Marring the Healthcare Industry and Hospital Administrations Keep Sweeping the Problem Under the Rug.

MIAMI, FL–(Marketwired – May 12, 2014) – Now that Obamacare has been made a reality and everyone has affordable access to health insurance, how confident are you in your Doctor’s hands? You go to your Doctor to get help in feeling better. You expect the best treatment possible but, how is that possible if your Doctors are popping pills themselves? National attention has been given to the health care industry lately about the ability to get coverage, but now that those headlines have subsided there is a newfound concern on being treated by a physician, or nurse, who might be abusing the pain medications they prescribe to their patients.

Being scheduled for surgery is bad enough on its own, but now to have to worry about your attending physician being too impaired to perform a surgery, or worse yet, using the pain medication meant for you on themselves and then replacing it with saline solution.

More and more cases are popping up around the country where a doctor or nurse has injected themselves with a syringe of opioids prescribed to their patients and then refilled the syringe. In a recent case, a doctor infected with Hepatitis C was caught using a patient’s anesthesia medication and refilling the used infected needles, then putting the needle back on the table. Dr. David Kwiatkowski was recently sentenced to 39 years in jail for leaving a trail of 45 unexplained Hepatitis C infection cases in his patients. In light of this situation some hospital administrations are trying to tackle this issue with one obvious solution that is not currently enforced; Drug Testing.

Often enough, when drug abuse issues come up involving medical professionals it is mostly swept under the rug. Administrations just send the drug addicts packing to look for another job, rarely are these thefts and drug abusers prosecuted. Healthcare facilities do not want to draw any unnecessary attention to themselves with these incidents for fear it will give them a black eye.

 

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