Hotline to help doctors with addictions

Press, 3 February 1987, Page 4

Hotline to help doctors with addictions

Special correspondent Auckland A confidential hotline to help doctors with alcohol and drug problems should be in operation nationally by May, according to the chairman of the Medical Council, Dr Stewart Alexander. Other doctors will be able to call the hotline if they fear a colleague’s heavy drinking or drug abuse is putting patients at risk. Dr Alexander said he believed there were very significant and extensive drink and drug problems among doctors which were not coming to light "because • they are not quite bad enough.”

Indications were that as many as 15 per cent of doctors developed some sort of addiction because

of the stress of their profession. No accurate statistics were available but we would be kidding if we put it much below that,” Dr Alexander said. In a letter to the latest “New Zealand Medical Journal,” a Canterbury practitioner, Dr Malcolm Mowat, said he knew of 26 doctors from one New Zealand area who were approached or had treatment for alcohol and/or drug addiction.

Dr Alexander said he believed the situation was similar in other places. He knew of a doctor in another area who was treating about 20 medical colleagues for alcohol or drug problems.

He said Dr Mowat was one of the persons involved in setting up the

service for doctors. The Medical Council had put forward the hotline proposal because of concern about the number of doctors who became addicted to drink and drugs as a result of professional pressures.

However, the service, based loosely on a successful British scheme, would be separate from the council as it was important that it was seen as independent of existing disciplinary procedures against doctors.

Calls to the hotline would trigger a process of assistance involving a flying squad of medical experts who could be summoned at short notice to meet the sick doctor. Dr Alexander said a trust deed to set up a national organisation out-

side the Medical Council had been drafted.

These questions would be discussed at another meeting next week and it was hoped to finalise details soon after. Dr Alexander said he would be most disappointed if he could not announce that the scheme was in operation when doctors gathered in Auckland in May for the biennial conference of the New Zealand Medical Association.

However, some issues remained to be resolved, principally what to do when sick doctors refused to co-operate or “slipped back” in treatment.

Ensuring patient safety was of vital concern to the medical profession, as well as looking after the welfare of sick doctors.