Topic: physicians

It’s these outdated attitudes towards addictions that enable the healthcare professional to ignore important information provided by the patient. 

Think physician practices and pharmacies and specialty clinics who began with a lucrative sideline that may now be their main source of revenue.

In the past, we’ve flung opioids at the problem, and haven’t developed alternatives.

The real solution would have been for Prince to have received treatment for his drug problem, which by this time was a far bigger issue than his somatic pain.

Too many doctors worry about “those people” showing up in the waiting room. They don’t particularly want to be known as a resource for the addicted.

There’s no blood test, no scan to aid diagnosis. Knowing intellectually that one in ten will succumb is very little help; it has no practical value in terms of predicting an individual outcome.

Try thinking of the interaction between drug seeker and practitioner as type of negotiation where the  two parties have very different goals.

There are just too many different forms of manipulation for any of us to be uniformly good at identifying them on the fly.

One sign of vulnerability: the place tended to be too busy or too slow.

Here was a physician who regularly committed an assortment of crimes without considering himself a criminal. To his way of thinking, he was the victim.