In the 25 July 2008 issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal there was a very interesting article by Dr Andrew Gilbey entitled Use of inappropriate titles of New Zealand practitioners of acupuncture, chiropractic and osteopathy (http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/121-1278/3160). This has been an issue of concern to the Medical Council of New Zealand, and over the past few years we have written to a number of non-medical practitioners who have used the title ‘Dr’ inappropriately.

We are careful when we do this, however, because it can be a grey area. Many non-medical people are fully entitled to use the title if they hold a university doctorate. Our concern is not so much about when people use the title ‘Dr’, it is when they do so in a manner which has the potential to mislead patients into believing that the person is a medical practitioner.

In his article Dr Gilbey suggests that the Council should make the New Zealand Yellow Pages aware that their current practice of allowing non- doctors to use the title ‘Dr’ is legally dubious.

The Council has been engaged with the publishers of our phone books on this issue for some years. Historically we had an agreement with Telecom regarding the Registered Medical Practitioners section at the front of the White Pages. Under this agreement, we provided Telecom with a list of registered medical practitioners so they could check that any person listed in this section was registered with the Council. Unfortunately, Telecom withdrew from this agreement without consultation or prior notice in 2007.

Subsequently the White and Yellow Pages were sold to the Yellow Pages Group. We wrote to the Yellow Pages Group in July 2007 outlining our concern that the practice of checking against the register appeared to have ceased. We specifically drew their attention to section 7 of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003. Furthermore, we suggested that the listing of an unregistered doctor in the Registered Medical Practitioners section of the White Pages could be considered a breach of the Act.

The Yellow Pages Group failed to respond to this letter and the practice of listing ‘Drs’ without reference to the register continued. Two further letters were sent to the Yellow Pages Group, the last letter containing a list of people who we discovered were listed in the ‘Registered Medical Practitioners’ page but who were not registered doctors.

In response to our final letter, the Yellow Pages Group advised that it would remove the word “Registered” from the heading of the section at the front of the White Pages and the words “All doctors listed in this section must be on the New Zealand Medical Register”. However, they also stated that they are “...unable to check the veracity of every listing and advertisement in our directories. Instead we accept advertising in good faith and we rely on our advertisers’ assurances that their advertising complies with all laws (including the Health Practitioner Competence Assurance Act 2003).”

We agree with Dr Gilbey that the practice of allowing non-doctors to advertise using the title ‘Dr’ is legally dubious and we have already alerted the Yellow Pages Group to this issue.

However, Council is not empowered to prosecute breaches of this section under the Health Practitioner Competence Assurance Act 2003. This power is provided to the Ministry of Health. Accordingly, we have forwarded a copy of Dr Gilbey’s article, this letter and our previous correspondence with the Yellow Pages Group to the Ministry for their consideration.