English summary: Addiction medicine specialists’ attitudes towards their patients

Professionals working in health care increasingly encounter patients with alcohol and drug disorders. These patients are challenging because they can be violent and they often have various social, legal and medical problems. Physicians’ attitudes are crucial in detecting and treating substance use disorders. In spite of this there are only few studies about physicians’ attitudes towards substance misusers.

Methods

This study was a postal questionnaire survey to all Finnish physicians with competence in addiction medicine or registered in a specialist programme. Addresses were collected from the Finnish Medical Association and from the Finnish Society of Addiction Medicine. The participation rate was 66/101.

Results

In general, addicted patients are treated in a professional manner. However, 33% of physicians think that patients with substance misuse are nearly always difficult and 31 % that they are responsible for their own disease. The physicians who do not feel anger towards substance misusers and work with them daily less often consider their patients difficult as compared to other physicians.

Conclusions

Special competence in addiction medicine does not eliminate all negative attitudes towards substance abusers. This should be kept in mind when improving medical education.