UNPAID DOCTORS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 12 July 1924, Page 14

UNPAID DOCTORS.

MEDICAL MEN AND “THE CALL OF HUMANITY.” Of late (says the Medical World) there has been a crop of instances where a doctor refusing to answer a summons to a serious case has been pilloried as a result of ,an inquest. We have referred to one in which the re.marks of a' well-known novelist occasioned much newspaper comment; in another a doctor in. the north was censured by a Coroner’s jury because it was stated that he refused to visit an aged woman without pre-payment of his fee, so that she died unattended by any medical man. A s it appeared that the deceased had long been ailing, and wa s past medical aid, a censure seems undeserved. In a country district where all the circumstances, financial as well as clinical, of a patient are known to the doctor he may be excused if he demurs to making a long, useless, and unpaid visit, with the added disadvantage of an actual out-of-pocket loss in car expenses- These are all matters outside the ken of a. lay critic. It is bad enough for a man who has his living to earn to be expected to work for nothing, but when he incurs, a tangible pecuniary loss by obeying what the public are' s o fond of describing as “the call of humanity,” it is necessary for)him to strike a balance between by? humanity and the duty he owes to. his family. But emphatically this applies only to such cases as that quoted; a summons to an emergency for an unknown ease demands a compliance with ethical canons no less than the exercise of common sense. We have a well-founded suspicion that most of the people so loud in decrying a. doctor who hesitates to work without payment are those slowest in meeting their own doctors’ bills, if, indeed, they trouble to pay any attention to them.