Video Catalog > Addictions

This video focuses on the tendency of health care professionals to ignore or deny the role of alcohol when diagnosing and treating illnesses and to avoid talking with patients about this pervasive problem. In spite of the fact that there are an estimated 8,000,000 abusers of alcohol, when a patient is admitted to a hospital, there is rarely any testing done for drinking. Dr. Enoch Gordis and other specialists comment on the extent of the misuse of alcohol in America; in most hospitals, as high as 30% of the illnesses being treated have a substantial relation to alcohol intake, and in VA hospitals, as high as 50%.

The video points out that nurses are given very little education on alcoholism. A nurse who has conquered alcohol in her own life and who has gone into addiction medicine talks about noticing when she started working in hospitals that no one was talking about the fact that alcoholism was the real root of many of the medical symptoms for which people came in for treatment. Recurrences are common and often staff is less compassionate to alcoholics who come in repeatedly for treatment.

Also discussed is the delicate subject of impaired health professionals. Too few hospitals have functioning employee assistance programs, and physicians and nurses have little education about how to confront a colleague about his/her drinking problem.

Color, 58 minutes, VHS

Price : $195.00