STUDENTS IN ST. HELENS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1066, 2 September 1930, Page 16

STUDENTS IN ST. HELENS

ADMISSION EMPOWERED BY LAW MINISTER’S OPINION From Our Resident Reporter WELLINGTON, Today. According to the Minister of Health, the Hon. A. J. Stallworthy, there is power in law to admit medical students to St. Helens Hospitals. This opinion the Minister expresses in a letter written in reply to a deputation of women which recently waited on the Prime Minister, the Hon. G. W. Forbes, and himself to protest against the admission of students. “The students in question are sixthyear medical students undei-going a course at the medical school in the University of Otago,” says the Minister. “The practice of admitting the students began, I am advised, as far back as 1918, even as early as 1912. I am now advised that there i 3 power in law to admit students. In practice no student is admitted without the prior expressed consent of the mother. The consent is usually given one to three months prior to confinement when the mother is perfectly capable of making her own decision and no compulsion or undue influence is exercised to secure such consent. “I am advised that over all the years referred to there has not been one single complaint against the attendance of medical students from any mother eonfiend in any St. Helens hospital. On the other hand these mothers have rendered a wonderful service to other mothers and babie3 generally by assisting the training of New Zealand medical students. In this connection I would indicate that some 50 per cent, of the medical practitioners practising in the Dominion today were trained in our own medical school, 672 of the total registered in the Dominion. POST-GRADUATE WORK “Many of these medical men have had no opportunity for post graduate work overseas, and I am sure you will realise how imperative it is that their training should be efficient and as complete as possible, particularly so as in New Zealand the medical profession conducts the great majority of confinement cases.- When one student attends it may be either to conduct or witness the work under the superintendence of the matron. When two students attend, and rarely if ever are there more than two at any one case, one conducts the work and the other witnesses. “In view of all the evidence, and in the interests of the mothers and ba/oies of the Dominion generally, the admission of sixth-year medical students to St. Helens hospitals appears to be in the public interest. To make doubly sure that the susceptibilities of no mother are wounded, and that in every case full consent is given without any pressure from the matrons or staff, and in all good conscience, I have given special instructions in this direction.”