THE MEDICINE BILL
»ir,-Listening to the Question Mark programme on our drug bill my sympathies were with the officer of the Health Department, who found himself hamstrung in replying to the cogent arguments of the other panel members. If an anonymous general practitioner had been on the panel he could have explained "patient pressure" in terms of those who present themselves demanding vitamin preparations for which their doctor can find no indication, or sedatives and hypnotics (usually a barbiturate specified by the patient) for minor psychiatric illness. Investigations of prescribing in the United Kingdom show a high proportion of these two groups of drugs. These patients announce openly their intention of obtaining their demands elsewhere if any attempt is made to investigate their real) needs, and as Dr. Sutch drily commented-a: doctor has -to live. Though no one denies the right of patients to receive medicine which is necessary to maintain their health, the real problem is surely’ the set-up which tends to lower the position of the family doctor to that of a purveyor of drugs prescribed by the patient. The economic pressures on the doctor tending towards over-prescribing (e.g., the need to spend an average of less than fifteen minutes with each patient) were also hinted at.
R.
E.
(Dunedin).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 893, 14 September 1956, Page 5
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212THE MEDICINE BILL New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 893, 14 September 1956, Page 5
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