Report of the committee on the employment of unqualified assistants by registered practitioners.

  • General Medical Council.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the committee on the employment of unqualified assistants by registered practitioners. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    us, we have repeatedly had representations made to us on a point which is of concern to medical education. We find it frequently alleged as an excuse for the improper employment of unqualified assistants, that the subordinate who is without professional title may often be of more convenience to his employer than a legally qualified assistant would be : that not only his inferiority of social rank carries with it some elements of such convenience, but, still more, that many unqualified assistants are abler for certain of the duties which have to be done than many who have a statutory qualification would be.* Especially it is stated that the freshly-licensed men are often unfamiliar with midwifery, and with the routine of dispensing and surgery-attendance. It does not in any degree appear to us that the argument to which we refer is valid, or even pertinent, as an excuse for the offence committed. If the practitioner needed his assistant only for uses which might rightly be fulfilled by a person without legal qualification to practise, clearly he would be imder no obligation to prefer the professional licentiate, and might at his discretion engage any unlicensed person whom he found better suited to such uses. But unqualified assistants evidently do not exist in their present number with a view only to legitimate uses; and indeed their existence as a sort of profession seems to depend in great part on the fact of their being so largely used for purposes which are not legitimate. It appears to us that in proportion as this is the case, each un- qualified assistant is more or less excluding from employment some junior member of the Profession; and that, apart from any question of the pecuniary earnings thus diverted from the qualified to the unqualified practitioner, the abuse tends to deprive junior members of the Profession of very valuable opportunities of early experience, and thus to aggravate the very evil which is alleged to be the apology for its existence. The educational evil, according to the statements which we • As regards the comparative efficiency of qualified and unqualified assistant-, we should of course expect that the freshly-licensed qualified assistant would in certain respects compare dl.-nd vantapeously with the person who had made “ unqualified assistantship ” his profession, and had bad some years of experience in it; hut we presume that the respects in which the legally-qualified person might fail to show himself the superior would not he those in which professional skill and discretion are required: (for in those respects the unqualified assistants could not, except by gross abuse, have acouired the experience on whi« h to found superiority :) and it evidently would not be admissible that, for any greater efficiency which he may have as a dispenser or surgery-assistant, he should he deemed a proper substitute for his employer in the responsibilities which are distinctly professional.