BHMS Qualification

[Corallinus]

I have seen a lot of homeopaths with this qualification that call themselves doctor.

Is this misleading to the public in anyway?

Your views please.

[Beancounter]

My immediate reaction is that, as it relates to homeopathy it is, by definition, misleading the public. End of story.

See elsewhere on this forum or http://www.homeowatch.org/ for details.

But this is not a considered response so I will leave it to the more learned amongst the forum members (and those with more googling time) to agree/disagree and post more pertinent reasons for each.

[Rolfe]

It may depend on where they are doing this.

"Doctor" is a courtesy title in many countries, as the basic medical degree is not a doctorate. Here, even unqualified medical students working under supervision in hospitals use it, for some reason to do with patient confidence. I'll let the medical people defend that one! Otherwise it does denote a medical qualification. Or of course a genuine doctorate degree, which might be in archaeology or mediaeval literature.

Anyone using a PhD in a non-medical subject to pass themselves off as a qualifed medical practitioner would be misleading the public, even though they were entitiled to the title. A qualified MBChB would not be misleading the public, even though he didn't actually have an academic doctorate.

In this country, a purely homoeopathic qualification would not be regarded as "medcial training" by the public. Therefore anyone calling themselves "doctor" on the back of that would indeed be misleading. However, isn't the BHMS a degree awarded in India? In India, does the public accept such training as a "medical qualification"? If they do, then arguably the appellation "doctor" would not be misleading, no matter how inadequate we might think such training is.

The real problem may be on the Internet, where someone based in a country where this training is recognised as medical, starts interacting with people from countries where it would not be so recognised.

The degree makes me twitchy. My own first degree is "BVMS", and sometimes it seems too close for comfort.

Rolfe.

[Prester John]

PHD's working in the medical field do not use the Dr preface as it could be misleading.

[Beancounter]

Originally posted by Rolfe
It may depend on where they are doing this.

However, isn't the BHMS a degree awarded in India? In India, does the public accept such training as a "medical qualification"? If they do, then arguably the appellation "doctor" would not be misleading, no matter how inadequate we might think such training is.



Yup, see for example Dr Sabni's www.homoeopathyclinic.com where it is a 51/2 year degree with a year's internship. Subjects covered include a wide range of "normal" areas of medicine.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Prester John
PHD's working in the medical field do not use the Dr preface as it could be misleading. Seems a shame, really, that the people with the genuine academic right to the title should have to forgo it, for the sake of the profession which has adopted the title without the academic right. But one can see the logic.

Silly story, from my student days.

I couldn't find the key to my locker in the inorganic chemistry lab in the university. I went to the porter to ask him to break the padlock for me so I could get at my lab coat. He said "you'll need to get a note from your doctor".

Picture ten seconds of stunned silence form me, wondering why on earth I needed a medical certificate to get into my chemistry locker, before the penny dropped and I realised that the porter was using the term in its correct academic context. He wanted confirmation from my lecturer that I was indeed the assigned owner of that particular locker.

I think I picked the lock with a hair-grip in the end!

Rolfe.

[Beancounter]

My apologies for digressing slightly here but Rolfe's story reminded me of a situation in this country (South Africa):

Getting a telephone installed here is a fairly time consuming process - week, month, whatever, but for obvious reasons medical doctors can bypass the process and get one pronto. Screening is not too onerous however, so my coleague with a PhD in Marine Biologiy filled in the form as "Dr" X and hey presto!!

Anyway, back to the thread.

[Pantastic]

Originally posted by Rolfe


Here, even unqualified medical students working under supervision in hospitals use it, for some reason to do with patient confidence. I'll let the medical people defend that one!


That is untrue, at least in my area. As a medical student you must make it clear to patients that you are studying and are not a doctor, and if they refer to you as doctor, you must always correct them. That is true for all medical schools as far as I am aware.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Beancounter
Subjects covered include a wide range of "normal" areas of medicine. Ah, that would explain why "DoctorLeela" on H'pathy talks like a doctor even though she has only a homoeopathic qualification. Funny though, Naturalhealth, who also claims the BHMS, couldn't pass herself off as a qualified medic to a kindergarten class.

I wonder how they integrate the mystical vital force and the unmeasurable healing vibrational energies with real biochemistry and pharmacology? One of the great puzzles of the universe to me is how anyone can have a decent education in the biomedical sciences, and then embrace such rampant pseudoscience as homoeopathy.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Pantastic
That is untrue, at least in my area. As a medical student you must make it clear to patients that you are studying and are not a doctor, and if they refer to you as doctor, you must always correct them. That is true for all medical schools as far as I am aware. My information may well be out of date. I know my friends who were studying medicine called themselves "Dr." while they were students on the wards, and were allowed to do minor procedures or take histories and things like that. But this was the 1970s.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this has since been stopped.

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by Rolfe

I wonder how they integrate the mystical vital force and the unmeasurable healing vibrational energies with real biochemistry and pharmacology?

Presumably the same way that really bad degrees are taught by not very bright people everywhere. I was myself never a very high-flying academic, but I do know what they look and sound like. I recently sat in on a meeting with a local degree-awarding college and found myself cringing with embarrassment at the rather charmingly naive scientific ideas being put across by lecturers who teach course with 'science' in the title.

We've got to the point of declining to assist with student projects when we think that the design is so poor that the supervisor should be ashamed of him/herself. It doesn't do the student any good to do a project that is terribly ill-conceived yet be told that it is a representation of real, if small-scale, scientific enquiry. We usually point out the erors and suggest the student discusses it with their supervisor. Mostly we don't hear any more from them, so who knows what they do with our prompt!


But, heck, if we want 50% of the work force to have degrees, someone has to teach the degrees that are easy enough for everyone to pass.

[Pantastic]

Originally posted by Rolfe
My information may well be out of date. I know my friends who were studying medicine called themselves "Dr." while they were students on the wards, and were allowed to do minor procedures or take histories and things like that. But this was the 1970s.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this has since been stopped.

Rolfe.

Yeah, students still do histories, examinations and various procedures for which they have been trained, but always under supervision and always making it clear that they are students.

After all, claiming to be a doctor when you are not is a crime, is it not?

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Pantastic
.... and always making it clear that they are students.Mmm, that's relatively recent (in historical terms). I remember being quite shocked in the 1970s when my friends told me they'd been told to call themselves "doctor" while they were still students. I particularly remember a conversation with a friend just after she graduated. I asked her when I got to call her "doctor", was it now or after her houseman year? She said any time, she'd been called "doctor" on the wards since she was a third year student, and this was normal practice. So as to give the patients confidence or something a bit scary like that.

I'm not at all surprised to learn that this is no longer the practice.

I don't know the legalities from the medical side. The reason I was shocked is that on the veterinary side this is all very strictly controlled by the Veterinary Surgeons Act (1966), and diagnosis and treatment of animals is strictly against the law unless you are a bona fide qualified vet. Students can do stuff under supervision (and this has been formalised in recent years), but the procedure is wholly the responsibility of the veterinary surgeon supervising, and really, most of the time seeing practice was spent with your hands in your pockets, watching. (I remember also being shocked when a class-mate told us he'd been left alone to see animal patients in the consulting room, and prescribe for them, as a third year student. This was just so illegal. And stupid, as we didn't know diddly-squat in third year.)

There isn't the same legal prohibition on diagnosing and treating humans (or the altmed community would have a very restricted time of it). But from what you say, that's on the understanding that the patient knows that the person offering the services isn't a doctor, and pretending to be a doctor is illegal? (In veterinary medicine it doesn't matter if you issue disclaimers that you're not a vet, diagnosing and treating animals is still a breach of the law.)

Still, to get back to the original question, if the BHMS course is recognised in India as "medical training", then it may not be deceptive in that culture for people so qualified to call themselves doctor.

After all, we'd think it deceptive for a (non-PhD) vet in this country to call themselves doctor, but it's normal practice in many other countries. It would be deceptive here, as it's not recognised practice, but it's not deceptive in the USA, for example, as the public understands what's being claimed.

If it's normal practice in India for people with academic degrees in homoeopathy to call themselves "doctor", I'd see that in the same light as it being normal practice for vets in America to call themselves doctor. Fine, so long as it's understood, and the public knows that the "doctor" might be only a homoeopath. It does get very murky when it comes to Internet interactions though, and if such a person were to come to this country they'd better drop it pronto.

Rolfe.