Fallen Angels: Addiction in Health Care

This is a term I first heard at a Narcotic Anonymous meeting.  It refers to healthcare workers that serve the ill members of our communities and succumb to the addiction of narcotics through their work sites.  There is a welcoming sense of honor in this designation.  Those members who use this description understand the horrors of having the disease of addiction. They realize the stress and self sacrifice that most healthcare workers face having experienced their care under some of their worst conditions.  They welcome us into their fellowship regardless of our educational, or social status.  They are our brothers and sisters on our journey to learn to arrest this disease, to re-gain honor and strength in ourselves, to encourage our self-forgiveness and accept that we too share this disease.

Fallen from grace out of a system that should best understand the entrance to this disease and the necessity for open supportive care, health angels find themselves discarded, disgraced, and abandoned.  There are professional impairment programs that allow most of us to retain our licenses submitting to 5 years or more of monitoring, random urine samples, monthly and quarterly reports, and possibly a chance at another job.  This sounds noble as a system to retain the experience and skills of the stricken healthcare workers, but Licensing boards also intervene and job searches are not so easy when one reveals their addiction and monitoring status.  With this picture in front of us it becomes a constant struggle to remain positive, trust in the rightness of our choices to have participated in rehabilitation, and believing that the “god as we know him” is working with us so we will again become functional society members returning to the workplaces that desperately need both our trained skills and our new level of understanding and compassion,

As in many other situations educating is needed specifically in the parts of our society that should be the most understanding and most supportive.   That is one of the reasons for writing these short essays. Someone who develops this disease either alcohol or drug addiction related, is probably somewhat confused about their situation and will probably not be searching a company’s web site to determine what the policies are for this situation. In many companies there may not even be any type of supportive, self-reporting and assistance policy.  In the past only punitive policies threatening  job expulsion, especially for drug use, was the norm.  But issues with addiction have increased in numbers in our overall society, and information, treatments and advances toward understanding, and management have tremendously improved in the recent decade.  Unfortunately only those practicing in the fields of addictionology or those in recovery from their addictions may be up to date on this progress.  It is vital that all those in healthcare, from physicians who see patients, to the Human Relations departmental personnel increase their understanding of this issue and increase their efforts to move into a more pro-active state about awareness, detection, intervention and salvage support.