To the Editors
Men’s Health Magazine

After reading the sensationalistic article, “Junkie in the O.R.” in the November issue, I speak for the 41,000 members of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) in encouraging you to raise your journalistic standards.

This article presents unsubstantiated theories as fact. It paints a lurid, unbalanced and, at times, bizarre picture of life in the operating room that reads more like Halloween fiction than investigative reporting. In addition, readers are led to believe that several prominent anesthesiologists had been interviewed for this article, when the writer merely lifted their quotes from old documents and used them inappropriately. This type of uninformed and sloppy reporting is not tolerated even in a basic journalism class.

Chemical dependence among physicians has been reported in the media many times and is hardly “breaking news”. Anesthesiologists can become victims of addiction just like any other member of the healthcare team, or any other member of society, for that matter. Healthcare organizations take this problem extremely seriously. ASA has been educating and training its members to recognize and confront this problem—in themselves or their colleagues—for more than 30 years.

Far from “passing around” physicians with substance abuse problems, as the article claims, today’s environment mandates that hospital departments deal with these problems, that these physicians be treated, and that they be allowed to return to practice ONLY if they are successfully rehabilitated and often in another area of medicine where exposure to medications is limited.

It is interesting to note that of all the medical professions, anesthesiology is the one that has been singled out time and time again for proactively IDENTIFYING and TACKLING problems, and thereby making impressive REDUCTIONS in risks to patients. This, too, has been written about many times. But that topic is not “sexy” enough to make it into the pages of Men’s Health. Readers who want to know more can log on to www.asahq.org.

Sincerely,

Mark J. Lema, M.D., Ph.D.
President
American Society of Anesthesiologists
Park Ridge, IL

Contact at ASA:

Gina Steiner
847-825-5586