Physicians, nurses should receive drug tests after adverse events

Hospitals should conduct drug tests on all physicians and nurses, especially following an adverse event, and physicians and nurses should be ready to comply, according to New York University Langone Medical Center’s Director of the Division of Medical Ethics. In a MedPage Today article published last week, Arthur L. Caplan, Ph.D., also encouraged hospitals to institute random drug tests as well as test physicians and nurses prior to employment.

Caplan acknowledged concerns about privacy invasion and disrespect, and advised that a positive test result should warrant an investigation, not an immediate firing. “Despite some of the flaws with testing, it seems to me that if we are going to commit to patient safety and putting patients’ interests first, we have to make sure that problems, safety difficulties, and adverse events are not linked to impaired physicians or nurses,” he wrote.