B.M.A. Praised For Statements

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31248, 21 December 1966, Page 20

B.M.A. Praised For Statements

The president-elect of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, Mr N. F. Greenslade, and his colleagues in Christchurch have been praised for making public statements on specialist hospital services by the New Zealand Medical Association.

The Medical Association has often criticised the B.M.A. The reference to Mr Greenslade is contained in the December issue of the association’s newsletter published by Dr. E. Geiringer in Wellington.

After referring to the importance of maintaining standards, the Medication Association says; “Our hospital specialists have been remiss in protecting standards of good medical care. For reasons which are understood, they have agreed all over the country to apply less than the best twentieth-century standards in the care of public hospital inpatients and out-patients. “It is easy to excuse them as having yielded to humane considerations in doing so, but it is not so easy to excuse them having done so, in the vast majority of instances, without public protest. “Frank Statements” “We have had an honourable exception to this unprofessional silence in the frank public statements earlier this year by Mr Greenslade and his colleagues in Christchurch. “It is to be hoped that in the months to come every hospital specialist who finds he is forced to work under circumstances which do not allow for proper modern standards of care will inform the public and the profession.” The association predicts that general practitioners in most parts of the country will find soon they are expected to see more and more patients with less and less proper specialist support. An insidious drop in standards of care will be imposed on them, it says. Suggested

ways of resisting this are:— “Raise fees so as to be able to earn sufficient without seeing an unreasonable number of patients. “When forced to see more patients than is professionally desirable, to do so under protest, and to keep the public constantly informed that they are not

getting the best of care. “To refer cases to private specialists whenever there are hold-ups in the hospital specialist service, and not to forgo specialist opinion merely because this might cause financial difficulties.

“Patients and public must, of course, be informed of the reasons for this action, but it is vital for the healthy future of our medical services that we should not, at this stage, make the wrong choice and dish out second-rate medicine to our patients for reasons of so-called humanity,” the association says.