Drug Testing In The Workplace Essay

Words: 899
Pages: 4

Drug testing in the workplace is important to keep the reliability of the hospital to its patients. Although some may consider drug tests to be unnecessary, a comprehensive test is needed to be able to prevent future mishaps that are drug related. That does not mean that the test should be completely invasive. The drug test should encompass drugs that are illegal in the state and workers that have an effect on patient care should be subject to them.
Drug testing should include all workers that work there that can have an impact on patient health. This means that all four kinds of employees would be subject to them. Although it might be obvious why you would want to test clerical and medical workers, as their decision making has a direct impact
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A blood sample would not be ideal because a blood sample can only test to see if there are drugs in your system for about a week after you took the drug. A hair sample might be thought to be less intrusive than a urine or blood sample but with a hair sample, you can find out a person’s medical history and you can find out what types of medication they are taking for it, which is a huge invasion of privacy. A urine sample can test if you have taken any kind of illegal drug in the past four to six weeks because a urine sample does not actually test to see if the drug is in your urine, but instead it tests to see if the metabolite of a drug is present. This could be problematic because some of the metabolites for illegal drugs are very similar to of common medication, like Advil’s similarity to marijuana or Nyquil for amphetamines (Drug Testing in the Workplace). If there were a positive result a clinician would need to look at the results and confirm whether it is a false positive or a correct prognosis of the drug in question. Although a urine sample is still considered invasive, it is a necessary step in order to keep the hospital a safe place for both the worker and the