TRAINING DOCTORS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2327, 10 September 1921, Page 4

TRAINING DOCTORS.

The extension of the medical course at Sydney University was referred to recently by Professor 11. G. Chapman, of the Chair of Physiology at the university. He said the medical curriculum had not been altered for 30 years. But the opportunity had now ' arisen to remodel the course in.accordance with the* conference in Melbourne of the representatives of the medical schools of all the Australian universities. Practically all over the world it had been found necessary in recent years to increase the training of the medical practitioner. The principal reason of the changes was to produce a better type of medical practitioner. Sufficient time was not being devoted to hospital work. Students had not had adequate opportunities to make observations of sick persons at the bedside. The first year of the course would now be devoted entirely to fundamental sciences on which all medical knowledge was based. The very considerable advances in bio-chemistry in the last 20 years had made it imperative that a longer period should be spent by the medical student in making himself acquainted with that branch of knowledge. Psychiatry would occupy 30 hours of the medical course. A professor for the subject would be appointed shortly. The whole of the fourth year of the course would be devoted to pathology. At the same time, in the fourth year the student would commence the study of medicine and surgery at hospital. The practice replaced the former study of practical surgery before medicine. Under the new curriculum medicine and surgery would be studied by the student concurrently. An advantage of the new curriculum was to increase considerably the course of instruction in preventive medicine or public health. It was thought that it should represent one of the three main objects in medical training.