President's Page November 2005   DCMS Physicians' Recovery Committee— Helping doctors beat addiction since 1979

by Leslie H. Secrest, MD 2005 DCMS President

A group of physicians that volunteers its time to the Dallas County Medical Society and serves its physician colleagues with dedication, compassion, empathy, and honesty has been on my mind for most of the year. Meeting the first Monday of every month, the Physicians’ Recovery Committee consults with physicians who are seeking the courage and support to confront impairments that limit their ability to function effectively with their patients, family, and friends, and to obtain treatment for these impairments.

The committee began as the Impaired Physician Committee in 1979, created from the awareness that physicians suffering from an addiction need the help of other physicians to support and advocate for treatment and follow-up of their disease. Drs Wayne Gossard and Steven Cobb were the committee’s first chairmen. Over the years, many committee members have dedicated themselves to confronting a potentially catastrophic illness, advocating for physicians, and protecting patients and the public, while encouraging physician families. The vision of advocacy and giving back a recovering physician to the community has spanned several generations of committee members and leadership. The vision, much like the Olympic torch moving toward its destination, has been handed from one committee member to another and from one chairperson to another. The consistency of the committee’s functioning and the maintenance of a clear vision over time is amazing.

With a little help from their friends, most physicians are self-referred to the committee. To return a recovering physician to the community, the committee must be sensitive and firm while confronting a disease whose logic is illogical, whose course is chronic, and who produces relapses at the most inopportune times. Physicians, like the rest of humanity, are not immune to addictions and other malady-producing impairments. The incidence of addiction among physicians is thought to be about 10 percent; the committee currently serves about 1.7 percent of that number. Although an addiction is a devastating illness, the recovery rate is very high among physicians who are properly treated and followed up with an appropriate recovery program. Because Medicine and the community hold physicians to a higher standard of responsibility, the physicians’ motivation and expectation for recovery also are high. As Vicki Chancellor, MD, the current committee chairperson, points out, among the tears and tragedy emerges a joy. She says that committee members get a lot of fun and satisfaction observing and participating in a physician’s recovery.

The committee’s advocacy doesn’t end with individual physicians; it also involves the education of physicians, the community, members of regulatory agencies, and the Legislature. The emerging evidence that an addiction is a disease is not well-known and accepted. The evidence is exciting and challenges the concepts that addiction is the result of weakness of character, poor choices, and lack of courage. Data now is showing that weakness of character, poor choices, and lack of courage are the result of a disease process and not the cause of the disease.

Unfortunately, most of society and agencies charged with protecting the public have developed attitudes and processes designed to respond to weakness of character, poor choices, and lack of courage. The ability to evaluate and focus on the disease process, and result in appropriate limits and appropriate treatment expectations, is a challenge to regulatory agencies whose members are political appointees whose charge is to protect the public and make sure all physicians meet acceptable levels of quality. The checks and balances of such a process are a challenge to everyone. The trust required between agency and physician is not facilitated by concepts of weakness of character, poor choices, and lack of courage. Through the years, the Physicians’ Recovery Committee has acquired a reputation of trust and discernment such that the Texas Medical Board has begun to issue orders that addicted and impaired physicians must be monitored each quarter by the committee.

To manage the volume with an all-volunteer committee is a challenge. Finding a way to fit this requirement into the vision of advocating for physicians also is a challenge. The answer may lie in developing coalitions with those who can educate the public about the disease of addiction and the implications this has for public policy. For physicians who have the public trust each day of their professional careers, treatment and recovery are easier if placed within the concept of the successful management of a chronic disease.

To the present and past members of the Physician Recovery Committee, the Dallas County Medical Society salutes you and thanks you for your service. Your honesty and dedication engenders respect, hope, and trust of all who come in contact with you.

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