Doctors considered superior—survey

Press, 13 June 1989, Page 5

Doctors considered superior—survey

PA Wellington Doctors are regarded by the public as considering themselves superior to other members of society, according to a survey by the Medical Association’s Auckland division.

The survey also found that general practitioners were rated as paid fairly to slightly overpaid, specialists were seen as overpaid and doctors were thought to be caring “but nowhere near very caring, towards their patients.”

The association sampled 300 Auckland people in the survey. The sample was chosen to match Auckland’s “demographic profile.”

“In summary we as a profession have an image problem in that we are thought to consider ourselves superior, although at least in general practice the greedy label doesn’t seem to have stuck,” the survey co-ordi-nator, Dr Ross McCormick, said in a paper to the general practitioners’

conference in Wellington. Those surveyed said their ideal general practitioner was a doctor who listened, explained things adequately and spent enough time with the patient. The survey found weekend service, value for money and doctors’ explanations of problems were areas of general practitioner care which the public thought were less than ideal.

But people reported an ease of getting appointments and that doctors performed well in giving them a choice of specialist.

Dr McCormick said that in general the people surveyed would appreciate having pharmacies, physiotherapists and gynaecologists in the same building as a general practitioner. “The public would prefer to use private gynaecologists and surgeons in spite of the probability of a fee for service.”

The advantages of priv-

ate specialists were low waiting time and a free choice of specialist.

“The public is obviously conservative. They want established types of service associated with us such as physiotherapy and are not that keen on alternatives such as hypnotherapy.

“They are probably racist in that the predominantly European Auckland population is not keen on us having persons with a knowledge of nonEuropean cultures in our surgeries,” Dr McCormick said.

He said the survey showed a “thumbs down” to nationalisation of general practitioners’ services, caution over an increase in control by the Auckland Area Health Board, and a cautious “yes” for more experimental health care systems, such as chains of doctors and multi-discip-linary groups.