British Doctors Are Being Worked To Death

Chronicle (Levin), 3 October 1949, Page 5

British Doctors Are Being Worked To Death

AUCKLAND, Oet. 1. "General practitioners " in Britain will be driven into early graves from overwork as tlie result of the way the national health scheme was being run. That's what decided me to come out to New Zealand. I didnt want to be killed before I am fifty," said the Auckland HospitaUs new medical superintendent, Dr. D. R. Goodfellow, M.A., M.D., who arrived here today. Dr, Goodfellow, aged 43, said the aeceptance of the post involved 'a 50 per cent. cut in his inevome but that did not worry him. "I wf^nted to live rather than exist the way I was doing in Britain," he said. Dr. Goodfellow explained the tremendous >urge of work brought about by the health sdheme,-as being "forced on the medical profession with indeeent haste." It meant general practitioners working the clock round and patients getting far less attention than they used to. He emphasised that he was not opposed to the national health service. He .was all in favour of one. His opposition was to the way the scheme was being run in Britain and tbe doetors were being made to carry it out. It was neither f'air to them nor their patients. In industrial centres like Didsbury where his father establishe.d a practice in 1S97, doctors were working three times as hard to try to cope with the new patients who descended on them. Wives were worn out answering the phone whicli rang all day and often most of the night. The answer to it all, Dr. Goodfellow thought, was the establishment of health centres. These would come in time but he considered it would take . ten vears before there was anything liko the number required and they were funetioning etfectively.