News in brief - Jan. 31, 2005

ACP asks DEA to clarify Rx policies - Medical school trains students to communicate with deaf - Florida med board gets new members

ACP asks DEA to clarify Rx policies

The second-largest physician group in the United States, the American College of Physicians, is calling upon the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to rapidly produce a document that clarifies the agency's position on several aspects of pain medicine.

In a Jan. 4 letter to the DEA, ACP President Charles K. Francis, MD, expressed concern that the DEA might have created a chilling effect on appropriate pain care when it removed a document entitled "Dispensing of Controlled Substances for the Treatment of Pain" from its Web site in October 2004. Dr. Francis added that an interim document, which the DEA published in the Nov. 16, 2004, Federal Register, "is causing confusion and will have negative effects on the care of patients."

"Clinicians need clear guidance on what factors raise questions in the prescribing of pain medications," Dr. Francis wrote. "Otherwise, there is a risk that proper prescribing will be discouraged, and physicians will be encouraged to turn away legitimate pain patients for fear of having too many such patients in a practice."

Dr. Francis also sought clarification of DEA policy regarding the writing of multiple prescriptions with different dispensing dates.

Medical school trains students to communicate with deaf

The University of California, San Diego, could be the first medical school to offer a program for first-and second-year medical students to learn American Sign Language, deaf culture, and cancer prevention and intervention skills geared toward the deaf community.

The Rebecca and John Moores UCSD Cancer Center sponsors five medical students a year. These students use their elective courses doing such things as spending a month in an immersion sign language course at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a university for the deaf, working with a sign language interpreter mentor, practicing with deaf patient simulators and developing independent projects on health care for the deaf.

Florida med board gets new members

The Florida Board of Medicine recently announced the appointment of two new board members: Carmel Barrau, MD, of Miami, and Frank Farmer, MD, of Ormond Beach.

Dr. Barrau, the first Haitian-American physician appointed to the board, is founder and president of UniHealth of South Florida -- a multispecialty group treating mostly indigent, minority populations. He is a voluntary professor at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

Dr. Farmer is a colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, where he is commander of the 919 Special Operation Medical Group. He is past president of the Florida Medical Assn. and a former recipient of the medical board's Chairman's Recognition Award for service to the practice of medicine and the citizens of Florida.