Pubdate: Sat, 19 Apr 2014
Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR)
Copyright: 2014 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.
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Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/25
Note: Accepts letters to the editor from Arkansas residents only
Author: Kalisha Willis

DRUG-TEST DOCTORS TOO

Doctors are well-respected around the United States. I think you will 
rarely find doctors in today's world with any problems or anything 
wrong with them. But to be on the safe side, in my opinion, doctors, 
just like everyone else, should be drug-tested. To get other jobs you 
have to be drug-tested, so why can't doctors be like others and be 
drug-tested as well?

Some doctors could be all doped up while working on patients; who 
wants a doctor working on them while there's something wrong with 
them and they're not in their right mind? The way people are dying, 
we don't need the people we depend on and trust the most with our 
sickness to be the cause of deaths.

In a recent New York Times article, a doctor had hepatitis C, a 
potentially fatal virus, The painkiller he used for the patients was 
the same he used for himself; while injecting his arm and then 
patient's arms with the same needle, he transmitted his disease to 
the patients. That goes to show that you can't trust everyone you 
hire. How can you be a doctor when you're sick yourself? This doctor 
killed two people with his sickness before he was finally arrested.

I believe hospitals should perform random drug and health checkups 
monthly. The tests should be comprehensive enough to screen for 
fentanyl and other commonly abused drugs.

In that case, I believe all doctors should be drug-tested because 
doctors are like normal people. Everyone has struggles and you never 
know what someone could be going through. All health-care workers 
with access to drugs, including doctors, should be subject to 
mandatory drug testing.

KALISHA WILLIS Strong
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom