Entry into practice : special committee report / Medical Practitioners' Union.

Date:
[1950?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Entry into practice : special committee report / Medical Practitioners' Union. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    somebody else. The main reason, however, for advocating a time limit of assistantships is one we have mentioned earlier in the Report, namely, that the principal has no inducement to take his assistant into partnership as long as he is allowed to continue to employ him as an assistant. Not only should the period of assistantship be limited but the terms and conditions of remuneration of assistants should be iaid down. It is not suggested that there should.be one rate for all assistants, but there should be established minimum rates for those who are working whole-time in this capacity. Conclusion The Medical Practitioners’ Union therefore proposes (1) that the period during which a principal could have the benefit of an assistant’ should normally be limited to two years (at the end of this period he should either take a partner or be required to reduce his list) and (2) that terms of remuneration and conditions of work for assistants should be established. GROUP PRACTICES AND HEALTH CENTRES General Practice, and for that matter Consultant Practice, has in the past been on a competitive basis. To obtain the best from the Health Service competition between doctors must give way to co- operation, and the Medical Practitioners’ Union would welcome any measure which speeded this transition. The introduction of a steeply graduated capitation rate would remove the financial necessity for the acute competition for patients which now exists. The old fashioned partnership was designed more to protect the financial interests of the partners than to foster clinical consultation. The financial need for such partnerships has largely disappeared, but the need for group practice remains and has become urgent. Divorced from its financial context group practice has everything to recommend it. Rota systems for nights and week-ends, mutual consultation between the members and some degree of specialisation within the group would work to the advantage of doctors and patients alike. The final expression of the co-operative idea will be found in the Health Centres, when built. In these Centres the doctors, thus relieved of many of their present cares, will work in harmony with each other, and with their minds free to devote to their clinical tasks. Some older doctors, who have spent their professional lives in a competitive system, may not welcome these developments; but the new entrants will at first welcome and later demand such improvements, for realizing that commercial medicine is the enemy of good clinical work, they will resent being launched into the sea of competitive medicine. 16
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