MEDICAL STUDENTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1943, Page 4

MEDICAL STUDENTS

FAR TOO MANY TAKING UP COURSES COUNTRY’S REQUIREMENTS EXCEEDED. OBSERVATIONS BY MINISTER OF EDUCATION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The Minister of Education (Mr Mason), in an interview, said serious questions were raised by the great and sudden increase that had taken place in the number of applicants for entry into the medical profession. Even making allowance for a reduction by examination failures, the number was greatly in excess of what the country could train and, if maintained, would be greatly in excess of the country’s requirements. Any attempt to provide for such great numbers could only mean that they would be half-trained, the effect of which would be to convert a temporary difficulty into a permanent calamity. More than 270 students, said Mr Mason, were taking the first year of the course, whereas careful computations by the Health Department two or three years ago gave between 60 and 70 graduates a year as sufficient to meet requirements on a generous allowance. The Medical School was only designed in 1925 to produce 60 graduates a year. By great exertions on the part of the staff more were being accommodated and immediate consideration was being given to the need for strengthening the staff and improving accommodation. That would secure that the needs of the country were fully met. It would not, however, provide for the training of 270 odd students a year —a, number vastly in excess of the needs of the country and of the possibility of training in midwifery in maternity hospitals and of the resources of the Medical School, or of any number of medical schools that the country would be justified in contemplating. It was not feasible to provide for a sudden and enormous influx in one year on the supposition that it might be balanced by a deficiency a year or two later.