Facing facts on Wearing Masks

Anesthesiologists want to know the facts about the effectiveness of the Wearing Masks programs. How many people see the programs? Do the programs keep people from using drugs? Do they prevent doctors from killing themselves with overdoses of said drugs? Further, do they keep physicians from shaming their hospitals like the young doctor in Galveston who went off the sea wall with an IV strapped to his arm whilst getting a full dose of fentanyl?! That story made the front page of the Houston Chronicle!

…well, it`s the stigma. We don`t really want to talk about it because we don`t want the media to get anesthesiologists and their specialty on the front page for being drug addicts. So, we don`t discuss it.

…well, it`s a time problem. Our ORs are jammed with patients; we`ve got to worry about how many patients we can get through the OR in a day…the administrative types are all over us about that. So, we simply don`t have the “spare” time to talk about addiction.

…well, it`s the effectiveness thing, just as we said before. If we show all seven of the Wearing Masks programs, how do we know this will work on our young physicians? Oh, and by the way, we`re fairly certain that no one older than a resident is using drugs…Ha ha ha…

Let`s stop and reflect for a moment…

Don`t you think that it`s time, finally time, to get serious about how many good physicians we have lost to drug abuse in the last 20 years?!

Quit picking the lint and bite the syringe…we asked a department chair of a large and well-known center how much it cost his department when one of his physicians was either intervened on, died of a mistaken overdose, or gave him/herself up for treatment.

He thought for a long moment…about $450,000!

Does your department have that sort of spare change lying around? Isn`t it time to get serious about drug abuse in anesthesia? What does it take for you to get mad, really mad, about this problem?

Dirk Wales is the recipient of the 2011 National Media Award of the American Society for Addiction Medicine for writing and directing seven Wearing Masks programs. Find out more in the June issue of the ASA Newsletter, page 46.