Anesthetists in Pennsylvania have a very important job: these doctors are responsible for keeping you and your loved ones alive during surgery. Too much anesthesia causes the patient to slip away. Too little, and anesthesiologists condemn a patient to awareness during excruciatingly painful surgery – in addition to extreme anguish, this anesthesia error can cause shock and other serious complications.

Anesthetists are masters of powerful drugs that hold sway over life and death. But, sometimes these experts become slaves to the very forces they are tasked with harnessing.

Anesthetists make up only around three percent of all medical doctors. However, they account for 20 to 30 percent of drug-addicted physicians. In addiction treatment programs, anesthetists are overrepresented among their colleagues by a ratio of three to one.

Easy access combined with the stresses intrinsic to providing critical medical care can make the euphoric feeling of opiod injection too much to resist. To keep themselves supplied, addicted anesthetists typically skim off a portion of the doses meant for patients, diverting the drugs for personal use.

Their drug of choice is often fentanyl and sufen-tanil, respectively 100 and 1,000 times stronger than morphine. Many drug-addicted anesthetists shoot up at work, hiding track marks on their legs or between their toes, then rig elaborate IV dispensing systems to hang underneath their scrubs.

Of course, drug addiction is a problem that affects only a relatively small number of physicians. But, with lives literally resting in their hands, any level of impairment among doctors is unacceptable. Even a small mistake can lead to a lifetime of regret for an anesthetist, and an irrecoverable loss for a patient's family.

Source: The Vancouver Sun, "Hidden risks in the operating room: Anesthetists are more likely than other doctors to become addicted to drugs," Sharon Kirkey, Feb. 11, 2012