Fear tactic advertising

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 44, No. 2, March 2002, Page 66 Letters

Regarding BCMJ 2001;43(10):551, the College of Physicians & Surgeons developed the Committee on Office Medical Practice Assessment under its mandate to “establish, monitor, and enforce standards of practice to enhance the quality of practice…amongst members.” This program was developed with an educational focus, not a disciplinary focus. All findings of the Committee are confidential and not available to the disciplinary side of the College function.

Over time it became evident that the physician most likely to have deficiencies was a physician who had been in practice more than 25 years, over the age of 60, practising as a solo practitioner without hospital privileges and seeing in excess of 40 patients per day. Given this information and given the educational focus of the Committee, it was elected to do 50% of the practice reviews randomly and 50% targeted on the basis of age being greater than 55 years. It was felt that this would be the best investment of the Committee’s limited resources. The goal of the Committee has always been remediation, not discipline.

It was on this basis that Dr Millar’s practice was selected for review. In fact, in many medical disciplines all physicians over the age of 55 have had a Compa review. A physician’s participation is mandated under the Medical Practitioners Act and the Rules Made Under the Medical Practitioners Act.

Dr Millar chose not to comply with the College’s process in this regard. His consistent refusal to comply led to a hearing before an inquiry committee and ultimately his suspension from the full medical register in 1993. Dr Millar continued on the temporary register as a suspended physician. His suspension was to continue until such time as he elected to comply. Dr Millar’s name was eventually erased from the medical register in December 1997 because Dr Millar chose not to pay his annual fees.

—D.H. Blackman, MD 
Deputy Registrar 
College of Physicians & Surgeons of BC

D.H. Blackman, MD . Fear tactic advertising. BCMJ, Vol. 44, No. 2, March, 2002, Page(s) 66 - Letters.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply