Students using Adderall and Cocaine to study

[VA Hopeful Dr]

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I am a medical school, not just SDN, attending. You can maybe slide with this kind of stuff when you are a student, but be aware of consequences if you get in the habit of any sort of shenanigans once an MD.

Given: patients' health is of course paramount, and good citizens don't break the law.

But state boards are all powerful. They hold us to a higher standard. Case studies of fellow docs, whom I know:

--Tx: doc RX'd bactrim for his wife's uti over a weekend. Cited.

--Tx: doc had a few in residency and punched a stop sign. Cited.

--Ca.: doc (resident) got DUI, state board decided that he could not see a patient alone (not a joke) for ONE YEAR because he could be potentially impaired

--La: doc didn't answer repeated registered letters from the board, threatened with citation

Citation means that 1) you are under scrutiny 2) you must report whenever applying for/ renewing clinical privileges, which happens every 2-5 years.

If you can get in trouble for not answering letters, why on earth would you risk cocaine or unprescribed amphetamines? Now you are not MD's yet, but why risk starting a habit?

Those cases just mean don't practice in those states. In my state, SC, I scanned back through like 8-10 years of board orders prior to getting licensed. If the drugs weren't controlled, the board didn't care. They do care about DUIs and really any actual arrest and they definitely don't like being ignored.

 

[blabbyblab]

I stumbled over here, some of this is interesting to read.
Just want to add that I made it to attending without this type of thing. I am most definitely not a genius or a paragon of willpower. Things that go up must come down. Might as well start building healthy coping mechanisms now.