|
Veterinary Practice News Editorial Blog:
Monday, July 14, 2008
What is Your Addiction?
By Somyr McLean Perry
Managing Editor of VeterinaryPracticeNews.com and Veterinary Practice News
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is your addiction? Vodka over your lunch hour, pain medication when it doesn’t hurt, lying that you ate a meal when you’ve avoided food for days?
About 8 percent of the general U.S. population has some form of addiction or substance abuse problem, and addiction experts believe that those numbers hold true for members of the veterinary profession. But as I’ve found out, it’s not just veterinarians who suffer.
A few months ago, in a small clinic in a suburb of Salt Lake City, a receptionist disappeared from her post at the front desk. When she didn’t come back, her supervisor went looking. She found the missing receptionist lying on the floor of the storage shed, lips blue, skin pale, huffing a can of canned air.
Most small veterinary clinics function like family units. Doctors and staff are very close to each other, they know each other’s families, and spend more than half their waking hours together. They depend on one another for the business to survive. And because of this, fear of stigma seem to keep most veterinarians from seeking help. Guilt seems to keep those who watch them suffer from seeking help, too.
In 2004 on a veterinary support staff message board a practice manager posted a painful plea to her peers for help after she had spent six years working for a veterinarian with a proven record of drug abuse and drugs were staring to go missing again. She said in her post, “I know that if I do report her she loses her license and the clinic will most likely be shut down. My staff will all lose their jobs. But most of all, I know that my actions would take away one of the most important things in my/her life … the clinic. I know that it is not "my fault" if I do report her. … But when I spoke to her today she begged me not to call because she didn't know how she would deal with losing the clinic.”
You never want to think that a family member is in trouble and co-workers often overlook the signs of substance addiction to protect the “family.” I know. I’ve been there.
I worked with Brandon for two years. He was an excellent technician and loved his patients with much compassion. His personality was always “different,” a little insecure, a little spastic, a little brash. But he made us laugh and he was part of our veterinary clinic family. We didn’t know that he was stealing Valium and other controlled drugs, including anabolic steroids, from the lock box. We never knew. Then he died of an overdose of Oxycodone two years after leaving the clinic. Just before his death, he revealed to his mother that he had stolen the drugs from our clinic.
We should have known, we should have suspected. We chalked up his sometimes erratic behavior to his quirky personality.
What’s most surprising to me isn’t that people in veterinary medicine (veterinarians and staff alike) abuse drugs and alcohol; it’s that there is little effort by the professional community as a whole to address the issue and create outlets for education and help, while allowing veterinarians to keep their careers and their dignity intact.
My editor said it right in her July Editor’s Note that veterinary medicine is backward on this issue. I hope our article “Substance Abuse: A Culture of Denial” weighs on the brains of the veterinary community and more discussion ensues.
I hope that those who pulled through addiction become impassioned to use their first-hand knowledge to change the system or to create a better one.
I hope that that those suffering, either from addiction or from knowing an addict, will find courage to get help.
I also hope that readers out there affected by this issue (in any way) will share their thoughts and stories with us. Talking about it can only make it better. E-mail me at sperry@bowtieinc.com.
« All Editorial Blogs
 Give us your opinion on
What is Your Addiction?
Industry Professional Site: Comments from non-industry professionals will be removed.
|