According to a new study, many doctors are not ready to prescribe marijuana.
Senior author of the study, Dr. Laura Jean Bierut, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis commented, “Medical education needs to catch up to marijuana legislation.”
“Physicians in training need to know the benefits and drawbacks associated with medical marijuana so they know when or if, and to whom, to prescribe the drug,” she said.
In the study, researchers surveyed 258 medical residents and fellows from across the country.
According to the findings, nine out of 10 said they were unprepared to prescribe medical marijuana while a whopping eighty-five percent said they hadn’t received any education about medical marijuana.
Considering that medical marijuana is legal more than half of the U.S, this is alarming.
“As a future physician, it worries me,” remarked study first author Anastasia Evanoff.
“We need to know how to answer questions about medical marijuana’s risks and benefits, but there is a fundamental mismatch between state laws involving marijuana and the education physicians-in-training receive at medical schools throughout the country,” she continued.
