MEDICAL COUNCIL

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 February 1937, Page 4

MEDICAL COUNCIL

HOW DOCTORS ARE DISCIPLINED Recently the General Medical Council took a grave vieAV of the conviction of a doctor of wilfully making a false certificate concerning the cause of death of a patient Avhom he attended in his last illness; but it did not direct the registrar to. erase his name from the register, says a writer in the “Manchester Guardian.” It caused to be erased from the register the name of a doctor who in relation to the facts alleged Avas proved guilty of infamous conduct in a professional respect.

The half-yearly sessions of the General Medical Council at Hallam Street have all the appearance of a court of law, but differ from one in important respects. In the big council chamber, which, Avith, its open fire, looks like an immense dining room, the place of the judge is taken by the president, registrar, and legal assessor. The jury are the 40 odd members of the council, all representatives of the universities, the British Medical Association, and the surgeons’ colleges. At the long table in front of the president are the solicitors and counsel, ’ Avhile the defendant sits or stands in a sort of box at the end of this. Witnesses are called. The defendant may employ counsel or solicitor. When the accusatory and defending speeches have been made it is not the immense jury but the handful of spectators Avho retire Avhile the matter is deliberated in camera. Some of the cases are held in camera, after, the defendant has been asked whether he agrees to this course. When-, a. bell rings, “strangers,” the laAvyers, and their client return to hear the result, which is solely that of erasure from the register or not, Avith noAv and again a lecture thrown in. Cases include drunkenness, drunkenness in charge of a car, adultery with one who is a patient, abortion, caiiA’assing for patients, undue familiarity with and demonstration towards a patient, selfadvertisement. The General Medical Council is neither a parliament for» making professional knvs nor a union for protecting professional interests. The object of its existence is to enable persons requiring medical aid to distinguish qualified from unqualified practitioners. It is not generally recognised that the public are left free to seek aid from an unqualified practitioner if they like. The unqualified practitioner is equally free to practice lor gain among those who choose to employ him. He may not, hotvever, give a valid certificate of sickness or death, hold public appointments, prescribe dangerous drugs. Qualified practitioners, as a set-off to their legal status, are subject to a central educational and disciplinary control. The instrument marking the distinction between qualified and unqualified persons is th'e Medical Register, of which the making and keeping is entrusted to Hie council.

The council does not initiate proceedings, does not employ detective methods. does not act as prosecutor against practitioners. It takes action only in cases of criminal conviction or of official censure specifically brought to its notice or in cases of formal complaint made by responsible persons and supported by prima facie

evidence. Also, if a practitioner’s name be erased.from the register it may be eventually restored. It is really the procedure which resembles that of the law court —the opposing counsel, the rule of evidence. The sessions of the General Medical

Council are a prime instance of selfdiscipline and judgment by one’s peers. There are many humorous interludes, as in the case of the Irishman, accused of drunkenness, who was warned, and who wrote to ask whether one more warning was due to him or not.