Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 24, 2016 News
…protect registration stamps
Instances of fraudulent activities have prompted the Guyana Medical Council to issue an advisory to licensed medical practitioners to make use of their respective registration numbers.
According to an advertisement in one of the daily newspapers yesterday, “The Medical Council of Guyana wishes to advise all medical practitioners completing legal documents such as prescriptions, NIS, Death Registration forms and Sick Leave forms to affix their registration number under their signature.”
Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, said that the issuance of the advisory is part of an effort to strengthen the process by encouraging medical practitioners to be compliant and not only rely on their signatures but their registration numbers’ stamp as well.
But this should have been a practice that all registered medical practitioners were long adhering to, according to the Chief Medical Officer, an ex officio member of the Council. “The law requires this. Everybody is assigned a number…because the signatures can vary slightly,” said Dr. Persaud as he added that “there have been a few instances where signatures were questionable.”
He disclosed that it was because of reported acts of forgery that the Medical Council opted to issue individual number stamps to the medical practitioners of the country. “There were several matters with NIS forms, with prescriptions, with different things where people try to forge signatures of doctors,” said Dr. Persaud.
And according to the CMO, forging a doctor’s signature warrants police action. But Dr. Persaud admitted, “Many times we cannot identify who the forging person is. I remember a couple of years back, about 10 to 15 years ago, that my signature was forged on a leave certificate sent to NIS. So this is a measure that we are putting in place.”
“People are always looking for easy opportunities to get what they want,” considered Dr. Persaud. Although he was unable to share the specific number of cases that the Ministry is aware of, he added, “There are always alleged cases.”
“Sometimes it is the client but we don’t always know who within the system can do that…so what we are doing is asking the medical practitioners to keep their stamps secured and always affix them after they sign,” said Dr. Persaud.
Even police reports that require the signatures of doctors, according to him, will have to be monitored since “people could add anything…”
“We need to be able to track the doctors and NIS and some other places have a system where they can track the gazetted doctors and their numbers so if they see a number and a signature and need to query something, they can call the doctors and validate what they see,” Dr. Persaud asserted.
A qualified physician must be registered by the Guyana Medical Council to be recognised. This registration process simply recognizes the individual as meeting the requirements recognised as those of a qualified physician entitled to independently practise human medicine whilst using the title of medical doctor.
Their licences can only be obtained by persons who are included in the register having met the qualifications to be registered and being afforded a registration stamp.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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