OTAGO MEDICAL SCHOOL

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21411, 1 March 1935, Page 11

OTAGO MEDICAL SCHOOL

# PROVISION OF HOUSE SURGEONS DISCUSSION BY HOSPITAL BOARD (PRESS ASSOCIATION TBLEORAM.I DUNEDIN. February 28. A brief discussion took place at the meeting of the Otago Hospital Board to-night on the capacity oC the Otago Medical School to turn out an adequate number of house surgeons. Dr. W. Newlands said he had noticed in the press that Mr W. Wallace, chairman of the Auckland Hospital Board, had stated that the Dunedin Hospital was able to turn out only a comparatively small number of medical practitioners, and that as a consequence the hospital in Auckland was not able to obtain a sufficient number of house surgeons. Dr. Newlands said that Mr Wallace was in error. The position was that the primary trouble occurred in the medical school, since the selection of students was made at the end of the first year, and students did not enter the hospital until the beginning of the fourth year. Dr. Newlands referred to the inability to extend teaching or equipment in the departments of anatomy and physiology. He thought that Mr Wallace was quite wrong in trying to magnify the potentialities of the Auckland Hospital as a training school to the detriment' or disparagement of Dunedin Hospital. Dr. Newlands said that the demand for house surgeons had grown enormously in the last 10 years, but if all the demand from the hospitals was satisfied the young doctors would find a difficulty in making a living when their period of hospital service had expired. He thought the true solution would be to refuse to supply newly-qualified men to the smaller hospitals where there was no permanent resident senior. The smaller hospital could be asked to obtain second-year men even at a slightly higher cost. Mr Wallace, Dr. Newlands added, had been wide of the mark in his statements. Mr J. W. Dove: He is also wide of the mark in other statements.