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Er Doctor Who Became Addicted To Fentanyl


Mithril

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well that is an important and depressing story. 

 

Notice all the places were we failed to notice the problem and correct it as a profession. Easy thing to miss if you are not aware about it. 

 

Probably will lose his licence in the end to add another blow. 

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Looks like he got somewhat unlucky (not sure if that's the right word to use) with his wife as well. You'd think she would be a great help with her having worked in a pain clinic but the fact that A) she was more so antagonizing him at the end of their marriage and B) she'd made him cut off from his parents earlier in their relationship, really screwed him. Basically he had a terrible support system.

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He clearly has a very bad illness.  Hopefully he gets the help he needs.  And perhaps if he demonstrates that he's worked through some of his addiction issues, he might practice medicine again.  People with substance use disorders can keep their licenses with monitoring, but since he also got himself into such bad legal problems, who knows.

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Looks like he got somewhat unlucky (not sure if that's the right word to use) with his wife as well. You'd think she would be a great help with her having worked in a pain clinic but the fact that A) she was more so antagonizing him at the end of their marriage and B) she'd made him cut off from his parents earlier in their relationship, really screwed him. Basically he had a terrible support system.

 

 

I didn't get that impression at all from the article. She kept telling him to get help, but he refused and that turned to bickering and yelling d/t frustration. It's understandable that she was stuck in a sticky moral dilemma her self. If she turned him in, she would end their family's only source of income, end her marriage, and probably ended his career. He would not have forgiven her for a very long time. 

 

Also in her defence, no clinician can accurately discern with 100% confidence between patients who are drug seeking and which are genuinely in pain. Remember, there's a reason that he was able to feed his addiction for so long without getting caught by his colleagues.

 

Regards to her destroying his relationship with his mother... She didn't know he had a substance abuse problem at that point and would later need an extensively strong support system. We see this "tug of war" between the mother-in law and the wife all the time and it's often storylines in popular TV shows: "Everybody loves Raymond - Deborah and Raymond's mother", "Grey's Anatomy - Cristina Yang with her first husband's mother", "How I met your Mother - Lily and Marshall's mother"... etc. Both the mother and the wife was pulling him towards themselves and it was his choice to make. He ultimately decided to choose his wife and kids over his parents because he wanted to make his marriage work. We can't only fault her for that.

 

We don't get to judge their marriage or her character based on a story written from his perspective. We don't know what it's like to have a loved one battle substance abuse disorder (at least I don't), and we also don't know her side of the story, her thoughts, experiences, and reasoning for her choices throughout this ordeal. No one can foresee such catastrophic turn of events in anyone life, marriage, and family. The best thing to do as readers is to reflect on our own life and lend a listening ear to people in our life who may be in similar situation.

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I didn't get that impression at all from the article. She kept telling him to get help, but he refused and that turned to bickering and yelling d/t frustration. It's understandable that she was stuck in a sticky moral dilemma her self. If she turned him in, she would end their family's only source of income, end her marriage, and probably ended his career. He would not have forgiven her for a very long time. 

 

Also in her defence, no clinician can accurately discern with 100% confidence between patients who are drug seeking and which are genuinely in pain. Remember, there's a reason that he was able to feed his addiction for so long without getting caught by his colleagues.

 

Regards to her destroying his relationship with his mother... She didn't know he had a substance abuse problem at that point and would later need an extensively strong support system. We see this "tug of war" between the mother-in law and the wife all the time and it's often storylines in popular TV shows: "Everybody loves Raymond - Deborah and Raymond's mother", "Grey's Anatomy - Cristina Yang with her first husband's mother", "How I met your Mother - Lily and Marshall's mother"... etc. Both the mother and the wife was pulling him towards themselves and it was his choice to make. He ultimately decided to choose his wife and kids over his parents because he wanted to make his marriage work. We can't only fault her for that.

 

We don't get to judge their marriage or her character based on a story written from his perspective. We don't know what it's like to have a loved one battle substance abuse disorder (at least I don't), and we also don't know her side of the story, her thoughts, experiences, and reasoning for her choices throughout this ordeal. No one can foresee such catastrophic turn of events in anyone life, marriage, and family. The best thing to do as readers is to reflect on our own life and lend a listening ear to people in our life who may be in similar situation.

 

Not clear even she knew the extend of things - I mean this is someone that hide a major drug addition at work by playing the system masterfully for a long time. 

 

There is a lot of things that failed here - the doctor in question in the most major way and then all the people around him in a lesser one. 

 

The story is heart breaking - I would still be extremely surprised if he was allowed to practise again. He got people fired, the abused the hospital practise, he probably was not is full use of his abilities while treating patients (on withdraw or on medications - even if it was simply without his full knowledge), his speciality seems to be one where he would be surrounded by medication that would not wise to have him around, he was charged criminally with a major crime. Plus I am (granted I am no expert in this) not aware of anyone doing something like this and being able to keep practising. 

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Really sad story.

 

Im not sure I agree with too many people that its a "failure of the system."  Like how many of us would actually have noticed his behavior if he was a coworker?  I doubt I would have.  Its amazing how much people can hide in plain sight if people arent looking for problems.

 

If anything, MAYBE his wife could have stopped it from going this far.  Like once she found him smoking patches, if she had REALLY played hardball, like go to rehab and get regular drug testing or im calling the police/CPSO, the situation could have probably stopped short of the legal/career trouble, at least to this extent.  Not that you can really blame her, its a complicated situation.  It doesnt seem like any coworkers really could have stopped him, especially because he seemed pretty good at lying his was out of trouble

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Really sad story.

 

Im not sure I agree with too many people that its a "failure of the system."  Like how many of us would actually have noticed his behavior if he was a coworker?  I doubt I would have.  Its amazing how much people can hide in plain sight if people arent looking for problems.

 

If anything, MAYBE his wife could have stopped it from going this far.  Like once she found him smoking patches, if she had REALLY played hardball, like go to rehab and get regular drug testing or im calling the police/CPSO, the situation could have probably stopped short of the legal/career trouble, at least to this extent.  Not that you can really blame her, its a complicated situation.  It doesnt seem like any coworkers really could have stopped him, especially because he seemed pretty good at lying his was out of trouble

 

May not of being possible - although we are trained to notice the signs. Two things stood out - one he was asking colleagues to break rules re opioids prescriptions (I mean you don't get a bigger red flag than that) and he lost a ton of weight for no particular reason.  Maybe not enough to guess there is a problem overall - particular in the ER with shifts and working with random people. I like to hope we can get better at figuring this stuff out.

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May not of being possible - although we are trained to notice the signs. Two things stood out - one he was asking colleagues to break rules re opioids prescriptions (I mean you don't get a bigger red flag than that) and he lost a ton of weight for no particular reason.  Maybe not enough to guess there is a problem overall - particular in the ER with shifts and working with random people. I like to hope we can get better at figuring this stuff out.

 

This should instantly result in some kind of action, like talking to the college if you really wanna be strict about it.

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To contrast this article, you got a doctor accused of trafficking 50k oxy pills

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/drug-trafficking-doctor-nova-scotia-bridgewater-1.4052394

I read up a little more on this case: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/sarah-jones-allegations-drug-trafficking-pharmacy-1.3526866

 

This seems to be a massive failure on the prescription monitoring program. There were multiple inconsistencies and red flags, yet each time they were content with the response. I can't even imagine a palliative doc prescribing 50,000 oxycodone pills in 5 years let alone a non-palliative family doc. And that was only to a single patient. This should've been stopped years ago.

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