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Drug-Test MPs: Doctor
Lisa Allison | The Advertiser | 01/28/2006

ONE of the state's most influential doctors has rejected calls for widespread drug tests for doctors, saying they should only be introduced if politicians roll their own sleeves up first.

Speaking for the first time since he became the president of the South Australian Medical Board, Dr Trevor Mudge said he saw little point in drug testing doctors.

"As soon as we have daily drug testing for politicians we should introduce them for doctors, because after all, they make much more important decisions than we do," Dr Mudge, an obstetrician, said. "The evidence from other countries is that widespread testing of doctors is very expensive and essentially not helpful."

While it was a reasonable public expectation that doctors abstain from smoking marijuana, it would be impossible to ban it, he said.

"Many things are expected of doctors and abstaining from marijuana is only one of them," Dr Mudge said. "How would you enforce it (a ban)? If you are going to have some sort of big brother seeing that doctors don't smoke marijuana, what else are you going to have big brother do?

"Are you going to have 24-hour surveillance of doctors' behaviour? What the medical board has to do is promote professionalism and protecting patients and the two go hand in hand."

Debate over drug testing of doctors was prominent in the SA Parliament last year. Independent MLC Nick Xenophon said there should be a "zero tolerance" policy for doctors who took drugs, and that he would introduce legislation for random drug testing for all doctors who had contact with patients.

Yesterday, Mr Xenophon, yet to introduce his legislation, said the issue should "still be on the agenda". "This is something the medical profession has to come to terms with," he said.

The testing debate was fuelled by last year's coronial inquest into the death of Ruth Sorensen, 69, after she was discharged from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2002. Ms Sorensen was treated by Dr Stuart Mauro, who had a 10-cone-a-week cannabis habit and was found by the Coroner to have given "seriously inadequate" treatment to her.

Dr Mauro is now suspended.

An obstetrician in Adelaide for 30 years, Dr Mudge has also been the president of the SA branch of the Australian Medical Association, and the vice president of the federal AMA. His term as president is three years.

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