Docs. Where have you been?

Twice in the past week I have talked to orthopedic surgeons who were clueless about buprenorphine (Suboxone). Well, not actually the surgeons themselves, but their "medical assistants." (All surgeons seem to do anymore is cut.) All jokes about the intellectual capacity of doctors in that specialty aside, maybe we should not expect them to completely grasp a concept like addiction that none of should claim to have mastered, but we all learned about opiate partial agonists in medical school. Even those of us for whom buprenorphine was not around way back then there were nalbuphine and pentazocine. Almost the same idea.

And it is not just the surgeons. ED docs often seem ignorant of the drug as well. Even when the patient produces a wallet card with an 800 number (which they don't bother to call) they ignore the drug's properties. They never call me either.

What will it take to get the rest of the medical profession up to speed on this drug?