Yes, sometimes the access that doctors have to drugs leads to poor decisions and bad behavior, but that’s not what the title of this piece refers to. We’re asking a totally different question, here: what if doctors were required to take certain drugs?
The question comes from Instapundit, who put it this way:
IF “SMART DRUGS” IMPROVE DOCTORS’ PERFORMANCE, is it malpractice not to take them?
The question is not as facetious as it seems. The linked article describes a study showing that doctors on a performance-enhancing drug called modafinil were able to make better decisions faster than their counterparts who have not taken any “smart” drugs. If smart drug usage becomes a reliable predictor of better outcomes, it’s possible that doctors will feel increasing pressure to take them. It’s even possible that those who do will advertise that fact so that people who want an “enhanced” doctor will know who to look for.
But still, it seems unlikely that it would ever come down to doctors being required to take such drugs. At least it does to us, today. (In a few years the idea might not sound so crazy.) Although it’s not hard to imagine non-performance-enhanced doctors eventually paying higher malpractice insurance premiums.
Requiring performance-enhancing drugs for some occupations might prove a slippery slope. Consider this fascinating development:
Fed-funded research: magic mushrooms create ‘openness’
A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” was enough to bring about a measureable and lasting personality change — “openness” — lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, say Johns Hopkins researchers.
By “openness,” they mean traits related to imagination, aesthetics, feelings, abstract ideas, and general broad-mindedness, the researchers said. Changes in these traits, measured on a widely used and scientifically validated personality inventory, were larger in magnitude than changes typically observed in healthy adults over decades of life experiences, the scientists say.
As described, “openness” would be a valuable trait for a new hire in any of thousands of different jobs. Maybe the pre-employment screening of the future will be an entirely different kind of drug test — one to make sure that the candidate has eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms at least once in the past year.
I don’t think you’re giving this the full Sun Tzu, Phil.
“… still, it seems unlikely that it would ever come down to doctors being required to take such drugs. At least it does to us, today. (In a few years the idea might not sound so crazy.) Although it’s not hard to imagine non-performance-enhanced doctors eventually paying higher malpractice insurance premiums.”
The enhanced doc’s would be making more (and possibly more diversified – “enhanced” range of specialty or general practice perhaps?) decisions per a given period of time, thereby increasing the statistical odds of their being responsible for a misdiagnosis or some other mistake (over looked test, record keeping error, etc). I think there is an equally good argument for enhanced doctors needing insurance relief relative to their unenhanced collegues due to the increase in malpractice insurance premiums they must pay as a result of their unique market capabilities.
My strategic advice is for doctors that choose to enhance to strictly confine their practice to one medical specialty only (even if that specialty is something as seemingly general as trauma surgeon). That strategy offers potential insurers (and patients) a better measurable set of criteria to choose among, I think, as well as offering the docs themselves a legitimate reason not to enhance that doesn’t involve personal squeamishness.