Thu, Oct 28, 1999 page2

• Dentists fear proposal will disgrace profession

  • By Erin Prelypchan / STAFF REPORTER
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  Dentists and legislators pressured the Department of Health yesterday to cancel its current plan to bring traditional dentists under the same legal framework as health practitioners, saying the move would endanger professional standards and potentially bring harm to the general public.

  "Incorporating non-medical practitioners into the profession is a disgrace," said Kevin Chen (3砲?`), director-general of the Taiwan Dental Association.

  Traditional dentists (鑲???/CHINESE>, 魯模?u), who often operate in rural areas or traditional marketplaces, are trained through apprenticeships and do not receive formal education. Although they are roughly divided into those who make dentures or false teeth and those who fit them for patients, they in fact do much more than these tasks, medically trained dentists said yesterday. They regularly pull teeth and administer anaesthetic -- procedures they are not qualified to perform, dentists said.

  Under the proposal, which if passed would take effect on Jan. 1, 2001, traditional dentists would be governed by the Medical Practitioners' Law, which currently covers Chinese herbalists, doctors and medically trained dentists.

  At yesterday's meeting, representatives of the Taiwan Dental Association, the ROC Dentists' Association and legislators said traditional dentists' functions and training cannot be compared with those of medical practitioners who receive years of training.

  Placing them under the same legal framework lowers medical professional standards, they said.

  Chiu Yi-pin (邱?彬), a consultant to the Taiwan Dentists' Association said: "These people are non-medical, like janitors or assistants. And you're mixing them in with us."

  The Medical Practitioners' Law, passed in 1987, does not cover the 90 or so traditional dentists which the DOH estimates are still practicing. Adding traditional dentists to the Medical Practitioners' Law would be the first time the profession was placed under comprehensive legal supervision, although their certification was supervised by the DOH until 1975. No traditional dentists have been certified since that time, said Cheng Tsong-ming (鄭聰明) from the DOH, who added that many of them are quite old.

  Bringing traditional dentists under the Medical Practitioners' Law is just a way of regulating their activities under Procedural Law for the time being, Cheng said.

  Yang Yi-mu (楊?@??/CHINESE>), another consultant for the Taiwan Dental Association, said he saw no reason for not creating separate legislation to govern traditional dentists' activities.

  "It's sheer laziness," he said. "They [the DOH] just don't want to come up with a separate law ... They [traditional dentists] are a historical relic. We should just let [the tradition] die."

  Yang blamed the KMT for the current problem.

  "This is what the KMT does -- mixes the good with the bad ... the DPP was always better to den-tists," Yang said, referring to the fact that Taichung's DPP mayor was a dentist before taking office.

  But despite Yang's assessment that the DPP was more sympathetic to their cause, the 11 legislators at yesterday's meeting were well balanced between the KMT, the DPP and independents.

  Deputy director-general of the Department of Health Yang Chih-liang (楊志良) conceded at the end of yesterday's meeting that separate legislation for traditional dentists might be needed to distinguish them from medical personnel.

  "Being a doctor, I respect professional standards," he said.

  A spokeswoman for the Department of Health last night declined to comment on the outcome of yesterday's discussion, saying the department would make an official announcement of its decision today.
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