RE "COVERING."

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9815, 26 August 1897, Page 3

RE "COVERING."

TO THE EDITOE OF THE PRESS,

Sir,—May I ask for space for an explana ion?

Medical men are bound by the laws of General Medical Council and their respective Universities and Colleges. If a duly qualified medical man attends a patient, who ia at the same time being attended by an unqualified person, the General Medical Council, if made aware of this, which is called " covering," will deprive the duly qualified medical man of his qualifications. A doctor goes to prison, by the law of the colouy he is deprived of his qualifications, and any doctor who meets the man so deprived of his qualifications in practice is liable to be deprived also of his qualifications.

If a doctor who is a surgeon goes and helps at an operation a doctor who lias no surgical qualification, he also is liable to be deprived of his qualifications by the General Medical Council.

Th,ese rules have all been made for the protection of the public, but doctors must obey them, and any doctor meeting Mr Hullett or any unqualified person in practice may lose his qualifications for covering, and these rules are being more strictly enforced throughout the British Dominions. They appear wise to the conVmon sense of the British public, whose decision now is that a man must study at a hospital for five years before he attempts to doctor his neighbour.—Yours, &c,

Mediccs.