Sadly, many people here in America struggle with problems with drugs or alcohol. Medical professionals are not immune to this affliction. In fact, given the high-stress nature of the medical profession, substance abuse is something that doctors and other medical workers can be particularly vulnerable to. When a doctor has drug/alcohol abuse allegations leveled against them, they may think that their career is essentially over and that they have no hope of bouncing back. A rather inspiring come-back story regarding a physician indicates that this doesn’t have to be the case.
The doctor in question is a pathologist who struggled with alcohol and prescription drug abuse while he was licensed in Virginia. Among the things the doctor’s drug/alcohol struggles led to were drug crime convictions and his Virginia medical license being suspended.
The doctor has since had a rather impressive recovery. He is currently 10 years sober and counting. In 2007, four years after the license suspension, he was able to get his Virginia license reinstated, with some restrictions. After moving to Alaska in 2009, the doctor received a medical license from Alaska’s medical board, though the board did put him on five years of probation. In 2011, the board opted to cut this probation short, so the doctor now has a completely restriction-free medical license.
The doctor has also had a fair amount of career success in recent years. Following a few of years of working as an assistant medical examiner in Alaska, he was recently promoted to being Alaska’s chief medical examiner.
As this case shows, drug/alcohol allegations don’t have to mean the end of a doctor’s medical career. If a Pennsylvania doctor has had struggles with drugs and alcohol and is now facing medical board proceedings, an experienced license defense attorney can fight to help get the doctor in the best position to get their life and their career back on track. Among the things such attorneys can do is give doctors advice on the types of treatment and support programs that are available to them and help them with any licensing hearings that come up.
Source: Alaska Dispatch, “Doctor who lost license in Virginia named Alaska’s chief medical examiner,” Kyle Hopkins, June 2, 2014
