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Prescription Drugs are Abused!
Stop the Presses!
Stop the Presses!
More unsurprising news
- Thread starter OldPsychDoc
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And the kicker: "She blames doctors".
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I've actually had a lot of patients who became addicts thanks to their doctors.
The typical--"he gave me xanax" because the patient was experiencing an acute stressor, but then the attending doctor never took the patient off of the xanax is one I heard a lot from residency. I'd call the doctor up and it turned out the patient was correct.
Lady's husband died, so the doctor gave her xanax. Well its 5 freakin years later and she's still on it. Every few months she'd tell him that it stopped giving her the effect it had (she's developed tolerance--a sign of dependence) and the doc upped the dose. He kept doing it for years.
The problem I had as a resident was, attending doctors do not want to be confronted by a resident for their bad practice, and many of my attendings were too chicken or not caring to do anything about it.
In one case, a doc in the area got several of his patients addicted to a benzo, & he maintained their dependence for years. That doc eventually died and now he had a few dozen patients that had no source of xanax. They got new docs who would not give them the outrageous doses of xanax they were previously on and several of them ended up on the inpatient unit at the same time for panic attacks (2ndary to withdrawal from xanax).
Had an ER doc in my hospital in residency that became known as the local "Dr Feelgood" & gave his patients every drug of abuse they wanted. This became known to other docs in the hospital, but because I guess out of politics no one confronted him about it. He eventually had to stop because a pharmacist caught what was going on & called the state medical board. However this was something I caught on months before the pharmacist called, reported it to my attendings & then they just sat on it.
The typical--"he gave me xanax" because the patient was experiencing an acute stressor, but then the attending doctor never took the patient off of the xanax is one I heard a lot from residency. I'd call the doctor up and it turned out the patient was correct.
Lady's husband died, so the doctor gave her xanax. Well its 5 freakin years later and she's still on it. Every few months she'd tell him that it stopped giving her the effect it had (she's developed tolerance--a sign of dependence) and the doc upped the dose. He kept doing it for years.
The problem I had as a resident was, attending doctors do not want to be confronted by a resident for their bad practice, and many of my attendings were too chicken or not caring to do anything about it.
In one case, a doc in the area got several of his patients addicted to a benzo, & he maintained their dependence for years. That doc eventually died and now he had a few dozen patients that had no source of xanax. They got new docs who would not give them the outrageous doses of xanax they were previously on and several of them ended up on the inpatient unit at the same time for panic attacks (2ndary to withdrawal from xanax).
Had an ER doc in my hospital in residency that became known as the local "Dr Feelgood" & gave his patients every drug of abuse they wanted. This became known to other docs in the hospital, but because I guess out of politics no one confronted him about it. He eventually had to stop because a pharmacist caught what was going on & called the state medical board. However this was something I caught on months before the pharmacist called, reported it to my attendings & then they just sat on it.
