Daily Wisdom: Should We Drug Test Doctors?

Daniel Levinson and Erika Broadhurst argue that the threat of doctors abusing drugs, including drug use that involves reusing needles on patients, requires drug testing of doctors:

Hospitals can do more to protect patients. Improved security, such as surveillance of drug storage areas, tighter chain of custody on drugs, and better tracking of controlled substances are obvious areas to target.

ut we should go further. We believe hospitals should be required to perform random drug tests on all health care workers with access to drugs. The tests should be comprehensive enough to screen for fentanyl and other commonly abused drugs and must keep up with evolving drug abuse patterns.

This is hardly a radical suggestion. By federal law, many workers in transportation or other safety-sensitive areas are already subject to random drug tests. These include pilots, school bus drivers, truck drivers, flight attendants, train engineers, subway operators, ship captains and pipeline emergency response crews.