dr-exmedic.com

On an Internet discussion board last night, I found myself confronted by a factoid that I’d heard many times before:  the fact that doctors have a much higher rate of drug abuse than the rest of the population.  I don’t know why, but for the first time, I started to wonder how well that fact is backed up.

It turns out, not very well:

A review of the literature revealed that no known study exists that compares alcohol, cigarettes, and other substance use rates for dentists, nurses, pharmacists, and physicians at one point in time, using a representative sample pool, and then comparing these rates with those reported by the general population.

That was in 2004.  According to all my searching, not much has changed, except for that particular study, which found results that are fairly different from what I’d been told for years.  (Admittedly, the results may not be totally generalizable.   The survey was conducted in New England; comparison to national numbers isn’t perfectly kosher.)  The past-month use rates are on this table:  the few drugs that docs don’t use at lower rates than the general population are at pretty low rates nevertheless, and the differences might not even be statistically significant.  The survey included items that helped find abusers, and the results are on that same page at Table 7.  Their abuse statistic is 1%, and even the “some drug dysfunction” category is only 4.8%–which compares to national past-year “abuse” rates of 4.9%. 

While these numbers may not tell the true story, it certainly makes me think that if physician drug abuse is higher than the national average, it doesn’t seem to be much higher.  Particularly when study after study after study comes up with similar results.