Should we randomly drug test healthcare professionals?

26-year-old surgical technician, Kristen Parker had a very serious drug problem. When doctors and nurses in the OR weren't looking, Parker would quietly steal syringes filled with the narcotic Fentanyl, which is up to 100 times as powerful as morphine, and replace them with syringes filled with saline. At first those replacement needles were new and sterilized. But as Parker's addiction worsened, she became sloppier. Soon she was swapping the Fentanyl syringes for dirty needles she'd used to inject herself.

Horrifying? Absolutely, especially given this fact: The previous summer, while living in New Jersey, Parker thinks she contracted hepatitis C from using dirty needles to shoot herself up with heroin.

Parker's behavior eventually aroused suspicions, and she was fired after failing a drug test. But it wouldn't be until over a year after Parker began work that officials, along with the state health department, began piecing together the damage she had caused. Ultimately, they calculated, she had exposed nearly 6,000 patients to hepatitis C.

via: Today