REFRESHER COURSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 16, 20 January 1939, Page 6

REFRESHER COURSES.

ENGLISH MEDICAL MEN. More than 1100 panel doctors "went back to school" during 1938. This year the number will be increased to more than I.jOO. These doctors, keen to provide the most up-to-date service, took a fortnight's "refresher" course at sixteen medical centres in all parts of the country. They thus became acquainted at first hand with the latest advances in scientific medicine. The year 1938 was the first complete v»ar for the working of the scheme. So eager have panel doctors been to avail themselves of these courses that three times, as manv applications were received last year as there were vacancies for the courses. The courses were arranged by the Ministry of Health after consultation with ail advisory committee on the medical side. Arrangements for the selection of individual doctors have l>een made through the Insurance Acts Committee of the British Medical Association as the recognised body representative of panel doctors. Grants are provided to cover the fee for the . course, travelling expenses and subsistence allowance, and the engagement of a locum tenens where necessary. The cost has been defrayed out of national health insurance funds. It is hoped to arrange courses at fiveyearly intervals for all panel doctors who wish to take advantage of the available facilities. Doctors are not eligible to take these courses until they have been qualified for five years. More than half the English doctors attending courses will go to the British Pijst(iraduate Medical School at Hammersmith, which is providing continuous courses from .March 7 onwards. Six hundred doctors will spend a fortnight at that centre out of a total of 11 SO doctor* attending courses in England. The other English centres at which courses are being held are Birmingham. Bristol, Cambridge. Leeds. Liverpool, Manchester. Xew- , ca~tie. Nottingham. Oxford and Sheffield. In addition, some •i-'iO Scottish panel doctors will be attending similar courses at Glasgow. Edin- < burgh. Dundee and Aberdeen, and UMf Welsh i panel doctors at the Welsh National School i of Medicine at Cardiff. 1