National medical service
1943-10-20 1943 1940s 15 pages -3- practitioners should have some basic knowledge on the subject. This is not so now. With reference to medical education and the recognition of professional knowledge after tests, it should be pointed out that there are some uncontrolled quasi-independent bodies,...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
20 October 1943
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/067DF3C0-5B6E-4911-A0E6-AA256EA4B4AF http://hdl.handle.net/10796/5402E961-C8C3-4542-A237-F4454B69C654 |
| Summary: | 1943-10-20
1943
1940s
15 pages
-3- practitioners should have some basic knowledge on the subject. This is not so now. With reference to medical education and the recognition of professional knowledge after tests, it should be pointed out that there are some uncontrolled quasi-independent bodies, under royal charter, which are purely examining bodies such as the Royal College (either Physicians or Surgeons) of England or of Ireland, with the corresponding colleges in Glasgow and Edinburgh and these bodies have powers of conferring passports of qualification certifying competence to practise. These bodies have no real legal standing but they are dependent on recognition by the General Medical Council of their examinations being up to a certain qualifying standard. But they have worked themselves up to great professional influence not only by the disposal of the diplomated qualifications but also by the provision of higher tests and examinations indicating special knowledge and by grants of post-graduate diplomas. These colleges are much more influential in England than in Scotland or Ireland. It is important that their strictly limited sphere should be recognised vis-a-vis with their great expanding influence. 4. At present the Factory Medical Service and Inspectorate, exercising (inter alia) vigilance on the statutory minimum Factory requirements, is under the Ministry of Labour but the same officers also now deal with Workmen's Compensation for the Home Office as previously and also make recommendations for appointments of Certifying Factory Surgeons for statutory certificates or medical examinations in connection with the Scheduled Industrial Diseases, and for Medical Referees for Workmen's Compensation purposes. This is an undesirable dual administration which needs revision. The compensatable Scheme Diseases, like the Industrial Lung Diseases, are under Home Office auspices. 5. All questions of Health and Health administration including supervision and inspection of voluntary health agencies and institutions (if allowed to exist) should be co-ordinated under a responsible Ministry of Health, with powers of delegation to the Government Departments, of different duties, and with machinery for continual interdepartmental co-operation. 6. In the Industrial Health section, Factory Health Administration, Industrial Disease Research and Working, and Workmen's Compensation should all be kept apart, with full statistical records, though moulded into one administration. The proper keeping of records of Industrial Disease and Hazards not only nationally but in different localities ; and classified in occupations, with frequent comparison and collaboration with the Registrar General's Department, is important. So far, this too has been neglected. The medical certificates in any Social Insurance Scheme may afford invaluable evidence of occupational risk and prevalence of incidental disease. 7. Social Medicine. This embraces the whole field of the effects of environment (and diminuendo of heredity) on civic and personal health and includes such issues as Water supply, Milk supply, Food policy, national Nutrition, Housing, Overcrowding, protection from infection, with facilities for isolation, segregation and treatment and immunity and provision of special and Local Authority health services. There is, so far, only one Professor of Social Medicine in Great Britain and that is the recently endowed Nuffield Professorship in Oxford. 8. In any comprehensive National Health Service, facilities will have to be provided for every citizen to have appropriate treatment, with provision for any required investigation for
292/847/2/113 |
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |