MEDICAL CONFIDENCES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 851, 20 December 1929, Page 1

MEDICAL CONFIDENCES

CORONER’S COMMENTS HOSPITAL BOARD’S OPINION Press Association DUNEDIN, Today. Several members of the Dunedin Hospital Board took objection at a meeting last evenirrg to recent remarks by the coroner, Mr. J. R. Bartholomew, at the inquest on a young woman who died in the Public Hospital following an illegal operation. The fact that she told the hospital doctors such an operation was performed was not notified till after her death. Tlie coroner had expressed the view that medical officers in a public hospital were in a different situation to private practitioners and the police should be notified. Dr. Newlands, at the board meeting, said it was practically universal that suspected illegal operation cases should he sent to hospital. If a difference were made between the relationship of the doctor as an officer in. a public institution and of a doctor in an outside institution a serious error would be committed, even though it was legal. The first essential between a doctor and his patient was that confidence should not be violated. It seemed to«him invidious that the privilege allowed legally to lawyers and by custom to clergymen was withheld from doctors. The magistrate, in laying down that a medical man should be a common informer, went outside his jurisdiction altogether. The chairman, Mr. W. E. S. Knight, held also that there should be no distinction between a doctor in private practice and the board’s medical staff.