Addiction Among Health Professionals : Addiction

Jackie was one of the growing numbers of nurses who are impaired because of addiction. Sullivan (1994) cited that “nurses who abuse substances not only place themselves at risk for physical, emotional, and professional harm, but also create hazards for the institutions in which they work as well as the public” (p. 20). To deal with the issue posed by an impaired nurse, “nursing leaders must consider legal, regulatory, ethical, humanistic, and practical considerations in

In the story of “Old Doc Rivers,” readers learn Doctor Rivers, an alcoholic who is surprisingly able to do his job in impeccable fashion. Physicians require a tremendous amount of coordination and attention, thus seeing a physician that is consistently intoxicated is concerning. Like Morphine, Dr. Rivers appears to use the alcohol as a coping mechanism, thus generally improving his work. Physicians are not exempt from suffering from illness and addictions. Dr. Rivers, “always had a jug of it behind his desk,” an indication of his embrace of addiction. Though dangerous, Dr. Rivers generally does a satisfactory job, leaving his patients with no reason to complain about his addiction. Do physicians that suffer from deadly addictions have to be barred from practicing? Dr. Rivers brings this debate to light. Physicians should be able to practice as long as they are not harming their patients. Though physicians do have a high responsibility in their career, they cannot be treated as outcasts for dealing with problems other people face on a regular basis. Physicians deal with human problems and patients must be aware of that. The social pressures put on Dr. Rivers to address his addiction ultimately led to his decline as a physician. He was a mediocre physician while sober, but a great physician while under the influence of his alcohol or dope. As Dr. Rivers comes to terms with his addiction, he starts messing up more, indicative of the mental battles some physicians face. He epitomized the saying, “doctors make the worst patients,” creating a dangerous situation for himself as he began to decline further into his addiction

As a physician, situated in Vancouver, Maté is no stranger to vulnerable drug addicts. Most of his clients are addicted to cocaine, alcohol, opiates, or tranquilizers and many suffer from mental illness. (288)

It is defined as a strong and harmful need to regularly have something or do something (Merrian- Webster Dictionary, 2015). A survey conducted by Lawrence, Rasinski, Yoon, and Curlin (2013), on 1,427 primary care physicians and 487 psychiatrics asking for their opinion on the nature of addiction. The majority of the physicians and psychiatrics believed that addiction is a disease, while the remaining believed that addiction is a stem from past psychological issues. In fact, in the early 1980s, the American Medical Association declared addiction a disease (Quinlan, 2009). Addiction is harmful because it leads to other diseases, injury, and early mortality including cancer, stroke, heart and lung diseases, dementia, HIV, hepatitis, and many accidental and deliberate forms of injury, such as domestic violence (Chambers, 2013). The prevalence of nurse anesthetists that suffer from addiction makes the need to strengthen education and prevention

Regular contact with health care professionals and other users, can help on to succeed in overcoming the users addiction.

The human service personal will encounter many different topics through the clients they come across. These topics can range from mental health issues, depression, self-harm, homelessness, and many more. Another topic is Drug abuse or addiction. Drug addiction effects everyone around the addict, spouse, parents, children, friends, and all that come in contact with the person. Drug abuse/addiction is a nationally wide spread epidemic in our society. Drug abuse, a nationally wide epidemic in society and anyone of any age can become an addict. Drug abuse is a major trend among adolescents starting with prescription drugs (SAMHSA). Many people start drug abuse with prescription medication. Drug addiction is a brain disease with no cure, however, like many other diseases there is treatment options and a person can live in recovery for life.

Most people are familiar with prescription medications; almost everyone has taken them at one point or another during their lifetime. Not all prescription drugs are addicting, but a large number of them are. Prescription drug abuse is a disease that has become a major problem in the United States, which affects over six-million Americans. Prescription drug abuse not only affects the individual, but can additionally have far-reaching consequences that affect family, personal health, employment, communities and society as a whole. Research has shown that at least 10% of people prescribed an addictive medication will become dependent on the medicine. Due to prescription drug abuse, states are beginning to monitor doctors who prescribe certain medications, more closely, which may scare some physicians away from prescribing helpful medications to people who truly need them.

Addiction has turned into an open discussion in America. A huge number of Americans have been affected by compulsion somehow or another. Numerous individuals know somebody who has been affected by this horrible sickness whether it be a parent, accomplice, kin or companion or may have been influenced themselves. This scientist has seen direct what habit can do to a man. While these individuals remain on the sidelines viewing the individual they know and love transform into somebody totally unrecognizable. At the point when a dependence begins it might simply be utilizing on the ends of the week, all over, or as the specialist endorses. As time ticks on, it turns out to be twice the same number of as recommended and before they know it, it has

Another negative consequence is the backflow of the response time for paramedics to attend to truly acute individuals. This issue, aside from being problematic, is also costly not only to hospitals, but also in the community, as these patients need residency in rehabilitation centers. Nurses spend much of their time in repeated thorough assessments before giving stronger pain medications since they are hesitant to do so to patients who are substance abusers. The ongoing resolution to this problem has been debated. Should nurses provide for the addictive requests of psychiatric patients, even with the diagnosis of chronic pain? The healthcare team of physicians, nurses, and social workers must complete a thorough psychiatric

Government research indicates that at least 100,000 doctors have an addiction to drugs or alcohol. There have been enough documented cases of doctors performing surgeries while under the influence that it has drawn national attention and the country is now asking "Should we mandatory drug test our practitioners?". Although the exact numbers are unknown, studies indicate that the percentage of physicians who use controlled substances is said to mirror that of the general population at about ten percent; however the numbers are estimated to be higher for surgeons and doctors who prescribe narcotics because of the ease of access to these controlled substances. Exactly how many surgeons perform while under the influence of mind-altering substance remains unknown; however even a one percent population poses critical issues for the profession. The most obvious is patient safety; the chances of loss of limb, loss of function and death are increased when critical thinking and surgical skills are clouded by the effects of controlled substances. Next, trust in medicine and healthcare as a whole is diminished when such activities occur.

Addiction treatment is a complex and paradoxical issue. Despite the fact that most of the medical and academic institutions define addiction as a chronic brain disease, it is too often treated on an acute basis. Chronic conditions are defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as requiring ongoing management over a period of years or decades and cover a wide range of health problems. The goals of chronic care are not to cure, but to enhance functional status, minimize distressing symptoms, prolong life through secondary prevention and enhance quality of life.

Drug addiction is a complex disease, even when the person is ready to quit, it may not be possible for it to happen. To fully comprehend drug addiction

PA profession face many issues today. Some of them are the same issues as any medical profession face nowadays. One of them is increase in patient load. The baby boomer generation is getting older and unfortunately sicker. Right now, we have a shortage of health care providers; PAs and other health care providers have to take care of more patient which means that there is less time we can spent with each patient. Another issue that we all, as medical professionals, are facing right now is an opioid abuse. More and more people are getting addicted to opioids. It is our duty and responsibility, as health care providers to recognize the signs and symptoms of addiction in our patients and offer help. There is one issues that I would like to discuss,

On average, approximately 650,000 opioid prescription are written every day. In addition, each day 78 Americans die from an opioid-related overdose. (The opioid epidemic, 2016). Doctors undoubtedly play a big role in our opioid problem. As previously mentioned, the pharmaceutical companies are big reason for this. In addition, doctors just don’t want to deal with drug abuse problems, so they ignore them. Anna Lembke says, “It's something that a lot of doctors avoid, which is also why a lot of doctors don't even ask their patients about substance abuse problems, because they just don't want to go there. They don't want to have to deal with the tension that arises in the interaction, in the moment when they are talking about something that the

In the United States addiction in the healthcare industry in a serious epidemic with a large number of its workers either addicted or abusing drugs and alcohol on a regular basis, in this review paper I will focus specifically on members of the nursing profession and nursing students. According to the ADA 1984, AMA 1987, AphA 1982, and ANA 1984 ( Kenna et, al.2004) drug and alcohol abuse and addiction is recognized as a serious threat against public safety due to the fact that not only does substance abuse impair the nurses ability to do their job to the best of their ability it also puts their patients at risk for receiving inadequate and sloppy care. One of the major hurdles in receiving treatment for many nurses and others in the healthcare field in that our society has been conditioned to view addicts as villains or as morally less then (Dunn 2005).