House-Surgeon System Defended

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30957, 13 January 1966, Page 3

House-Surgeon System Defended

(N.Z. Press Association)

WANGANUI, Jan. 12. The Medical Superintendent of Wanganui Hospital, Dr. W. J. Trezise, tonight defended the existing system of training house surgeons in New Zealand. He said there was not the slightest evidence to substantiate statements that some patients would die needlessly this year because of the system.

These allegations had been advanced by a noisy minority of the medical profession, he said.

“Members of the New Zealand Medical Association—as they call themselves—are not the official organ of the profession. They are not the British Medical Association,

“They number only a few hundred and turn out a small journal that happens to be very vocal. “I can assure you, this is only the opinion of a small minority. It is not the majority view.” Dr. Trezise said the criticism was made in an editorial of the N.Z.M.A.’s January bulletin. It said the present system of spreading young doctors “across the map to act as first-year house surgeons made it impossible for good care to be extended to the country’s sick.” Several patients would die needlessly this year because of errors by inexperienced

and grossly overworked house surgeons, the editorial claimed. “Half of our house surgeons work in hospitals without facilities for post-graduate

training, and that means the enormous amount of knowledge which they have accumulated at the time of qualification is allowed to go to waste,” the editorial stated. “It is wrong to send newlyqualified doctors to small provincial hospitals. “To deny proper training of the young doctors is to cheat both them and society of the fruits of an expensive education.” The editorial suggested that first and second-year doctors belonged in training hospitals only. Those institutions that qualified as much were the public hospitals in the four

main centres, and W’aikato and Palmerston North hospitals.

Dr. Trezise said the N.Z.M.A. did not consider what the doctors were being trained for.

“It is quite possible to get a sound training at provincial hospitals in the common branches of medicine,” he said. This included the basic aspects of medicine, surgery, gynaecology, and obstetrics, diseases of the ear, nose, throat and eye and skin disorders.

“In Wanganui Hospital, all the medical staff are specialists with high qualifications appropriate to their specialities,” Dr. Trezise said. “Their qualifications are exactly the same as those held by doctors in the bigger hospitals. “Our hospital has the

official recognition of the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Australasian College. Both have approved our hospital as one where young men may train as surgeons.

“And, there is not the slightest evidence that hospitals of our size and with staff of our quality, allow their house surgeons to care for patients unsupervised.” Dr. Trezise said anyone seeking training in the narrow specialties of medicine would have to go elsewhere. At the same time, these specialties were of little practical application in general practice. “The all-important thing is that the British Medical Association fully supports the present situation,” said Dr Trezise. “It has a New Zealand membership of several thousand, comprising the vast majority of our doctors.”