Drug and alcohol use is of substantial interest to employers. Be it pre-employment screening or disciplinary hearings, these controversies have significant ramifications for a person’s career. Workplace drug testing and forensic urine drug testing has become important to sensitive employment and industries with hazardous work conditions or jobs affecting the safety of others.
Metabolites of some drugs may remain in the urine for at least several days following a single dose. Thus the tests require interpretation and integration with other clinical information to give an opinion about the affects of a drug or combination of drug on an individual at the time of the incident. The Forensic Panel’s expert toxicologist uses all available information, including the patient’s history, information from the examinee, relatives or employer, physical examination and laboratory tests.
It is also an important task for a forensic toxicologist to ensure accepted analytical methods and the most up to date instrumentation in the field. Toxicology tests, when properly performed and confirmed, indicate use within a varying period of time depending on the drug and its dose. Such tests do not disclose a pattern of use or the presence of drug dependence.
Peer-review provides the experts at The Forensic Panel with oversight from peers with the gravitas and complementary expertise to account for all reasonable interpretations of the clinical data and to explain those analyses which are not reflective of standards of toxicology.