Summary of published results of pre-employment urine drug testing (see text for further details)
| Author(s), year | Subjects | Substances tested | % positive tests | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| bz, benzodiazepines; barb, barbiturates; amph, amphetamines; pcp, phencyclidine; op, opiates; thc, marijuana; meth, methadone; pro, propoxyphene; mep, meperidine; phe, phenothiazines; etoh, ethanol. | ||||
| Lewy, 1993 | 500 “prospective hospital employees” | bz, barb, amph, pcp, op, coc | 2.6 | Author suggested such screening is wasteful since only one positive was non-medicinal. |
| Lewy, 1988, 1991 | 791 housestaff | bz, barb, amph, pcp, op, thc, coc | 0.25 | Same author declared testing useful in sending message about drug use being unacceptable and providing access to help resources. |
| Smith and Hanbury, 1991 | 172 “prospective employees”, no faculty | bz, barb, amph, pcp, op, thc, meth, coc | 4.1 | Not enough positive tests7 to validly predict patterns of abuse reported by authors. |
| Parish, 1989 | 195 “recently hired hospital employees” | bz, barb, amph, pcp, op, thc, coc, pro, mep, phe | 12 | No medical review of positives. No correlation found between test results and job performance. |
| Moore and Swafford, 1993 | 3514 “new employees” | bz, barb, amph, pcp, op, thc, meth, coc, pro, etoh | 5 | Example of importance of medical review of positive tests. |
| 2.2 after medical review | ||||
| Lange et al, 1994 | Prospective hospital employees (no medical staff) | bz, barb, amph, pcp, op, thc, meth, coc | 10.8 in 1989 without any medical review | Shows the lack of sensitivity of testing “for cause” only, which was the policy in 1989. Implementation of pre-employment testing between 1989 and 1991 may have acted as a deterrent and accounted for the fewer positives in 1991. |
| 593 in 1989 | 5.8 in 1991 before medical review | |||
| 365 in 1991 | 3.8 in 1991 after medical review | |||