Portrait of an impaired physician.

Since its inception five years ago, The Medical Society of Virginia's Impaired Physician Program has evaluated 140 physicians. Of these, 60 have completed treatment and aftercare monitoring, and 80 are being followed. Who are these physicians? the Editors asked Dr. David G. Fluharty, Jr., the program's medical director. What are they like? How about some case reports? The program's confidentiality prevented him from divulging any identifying information, Dr. Fluharty replied. He could say, however, that within the Virginia program's experience, impaired physicians fall into two distinct age groups. About a quarter of them are 28 years old +/- a few years; these younger doctors usually are dysfunctional due to "hard" drugs. The remaining three-quarters are 42 years old +/- a few years; in this group impairment is due most often to alcoholism. As for case reports, Dr. Fluharty continued, the program's compelling experience is that one case is pretty much like another, so similar are the historical patterns of birth, background, and behavior. To illustrate, he drew the following composite picture of an impaired physician in the larger, older, alcoholic group.