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Today’s (5th) 9 o’clock news begins with KBS ‘ exclusive coverage.
When declaring war on drugs a year ago, the government said, ‘We will punish people loudly and strongly.’
In particular, the prosecution believed that medical drugs, which are relatively cheap and less objectionable, were a bigger problem. In a KBS
survey three months ago, two out of three people with drug experience answered that they got drugs at a hospital. However, when analyzing the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety data, it was found that there are around 8,000 doctors who prescribe narcotics to themselves each year. There were cases where he prescribed more than 400 pills per day. First, let’s look at the actual situation. Reporter Lee Hwa-jin covered the story. [Report] The drug with the word ‘drug’ written on it in large letters is ‘oxycodone’, a powerful narcotic painkiller. It is a narcotic prescribed on a limited basis to people suffering from extreme pain, such as cancer patients, but cannot be obtained at regular pharmacies. [Pharmacist: “It is a drug that can cause dependence and can even lead to death due to the side effect of respiratory depression.”] However, there were people who were prescribed as many as 160,000 tablets of this drug last year.
It is necessary to take more than 400 pills a day, and it was Mr. A, a doctor working at a local nursing hospital.
He used his own prescribing authority to ‘self-prescribe’ a large amount of narcotics to himself.
Mr. A quit the hospital he worked at four months ago. The hospital says that Mr. A prescribed more medicine than the prescribed amount even under the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety’s surveillance due to concerns about misuse.
[Nursing hospital official/Voice modified: “If you paid for two weeks (self-prescription), you have to take it for two weeks. Within a week, another prescription comes out again and again. I’ve said this several times.”] Also, Mr.
A. He also said that he easily prescribed narcotic drugs to patients who came to visit him.
[Nursing hospital official/Voice modified: “He came here because he needed to get a prescription from the director, so I thought what kind of doctor he was, but when I looked at it, I saw that it was filled with psychotropic drugs.”] It was difficult to contact the doctor
. Mr. A said, “I needed painkillers due to the aftereffects of spinal surgery,” and that he “took all” of the prescribed narcotics.
[Mr. A/Doctor who self-prescribes narcotics/Voice modified: “Now, drugs have tolerance. As a result, (the dosage) increased like this. And the drug stopped responding again. As a result, the dosage kept increasing. It went up.”]
Mr. A was also investigated by the prosecution at the request of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, but the prosecution suspended the indictment last May.
Although the charge of abusing narcotics was acknowledged, the ‘self-prescription’ itself was judged to be토토사이트 no problem under medical law.
[Choi Yeon-sook/Member of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee/People Power Party: “I believe that treating a patient in a bad situation or in a situation where they are addicted due to misuse or abuse is infringing on the patient’s right to treatment.”] The doctor who prescribed narcotics to him
. There are approximately 8,000 practicing doctors each year, or 6% of all active doctors.
Additionally, due to the lack of proper regulations, the number of new doctors engaging in ‘self-prescription’ is increasing by more than a thousand every year.