RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

A call has been made for the Med­ical Board to crack down on er­rant doc­tors who mis­rep­re­sent them­selves as spe­cial­ists.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, T&T’s pi­o­neer of kid­ney trans­plan­ta­tion Dr Lall Sawh spoke out against doc­tors who ad­ver­tise on so­cial me­dia even though they are not qual­i­fied or ex­pe­ri­enced spe­cial­ists.

“Some can­not even hold a scalpel. In my day you could come back with your post­grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tions and you are not deemed a spe­cial­ist un­til you spend eight years in the spe­cial­i­ty,” he said.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, these young fel­las are now fin­ish­ing ex­ams and the next morn­ing they are putting up posts that they are a spe­cial­ist.”

Dr Sawh added: “Any­body who ad­ver­tis­es them­selves as a su­per-spe­cial­ist, watch that guy, watch that la­dy, be­cause if you do good work, your pa­tients will ad­ver­tise for you. Pa­tients will know who you are and they will spread that word for you.”

He said it ap­peared as if there are no mea­sures in place to deal with the prob­lem.

“In this coun­try, they get away with it, this is a coun­try you can get away with any­thing in­clud­ing mur­der. It is a (sic) shame and I hope the Med­ical Board get wise to this and deal with it,” he said.

Dr Sawh rec­om­mend­ed that doc­tors go abroad for spe­cialised train­ing for a min­i­mum of four years be­fore re­turn­ing to T&T.

He al­so said that pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships be­tween the gov­ern­ment and pri­vate hos­pi­tals had “se­ri­ous short­com­ings.”

“The Gov­ern­ment needs to fo­cus on putting re­sources in­to the pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ty. Spend mon­ey, de­vel­op the ser­vices, get ad­e­quate­ly trained peo­ple in the var­i­ous posts and have ac­count­abil­i­ty. Don’t spend mon­ey stu­pid­ly by giv­ing a med­ical cen­tre mil­lions of dol­lars for do­ing some­thing you could do,” he said.

Dr Sawh said pri­vate hos­pi­tals will al­ways do well be­cause there are peo­ple who have in­sur­ance and will want pri­vate care. But he ad­vised peo­ple to re­search med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and ver­i­fy whether they are spe­cialised in their field.

Pro­fes­sor Ter­rence Seemu­n­gal, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences said he al­so did not sup­port ad­ver­tis­ing by doc­tors.

“Yes, I my­self do not be­lieve that per­son­al ad­ver­tis­ing is a good idea for prac­tis­ing doc­tors. Im­por­tant­ly a spe­cial­ist can on­ly be called a spe­cial­ist in the law if they are so reg­is­tered by the med­ical board,” Pro­fes­sor Seemu­n­gal said.

Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse to the is­sues raised by Dr Sawh, pres­i­dent of the Med­ical Coun­cil of T&T Dr Neil Singh re­vealed there are three mat­ters in the High Court against doc­tors.

“To be a spe­cial­ist your name has to be en­tered in the Reg­is­trar of Med­ical Spe­cial­ists. We have had many is­sues with doc­tors try­ing to call them­selves spe­cial­ists who are not,” he said.

“It is wrong to pose as a spe­cial­ist if your name is not en­tered and these per­sons can be dis­ci­plined and can be guilty of dis­grace­ful con­duct by pro­vid­ing false in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic.”

Dr Singh al­so said doc­tors are mis­lead­ing the pub­lic with false in­for­ma­tion.

“We are see­ing doc­tors pur­port­ing treat­ment that is not sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly ap­proved and we hope to deal with that as well,” he said.

He ad­vised peo­ple who sus­pect a doc­tor is un­eth­i­cal to send an email to the TTMB at med­ical­boardtt@gmail.com.