SUPPLY OF MEDICAL MEN IN NEW ZEALAND

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21288, 6 October 1934, Page 18

SUPPLY OF MEDICAL MEN IN NEW ZEALAND

to tiie editor o/r the I'liasa. Sir, —My reason for writing to you is that this subject was discussed in our Parliament this week, and it was emphasised by some Labour members that there was a shortage of house surgeons in. New Zealand. It was suggested that- more men should be trained in Dunedin or that a second medical school should be established in Auckland. Something was said about "cornering" the medical work of New Zealand by the Medical Association (or union). This came badly from the Labour parly. Labour unions have drastically curtailed the admissions to their trades because of the fear of having too many workers for the work available. Apprentices have been limited to an extreme degree because of that fear. Now, looking at the medical profession in New Zealand, what do we find? It is a well known fact that we have at least 50 per cent, too many medical men in practice in New Zealand. The students and house surgeons may be called medical apprentices, and they themselves are aware of the difficulty of getting work to do when they leave hospital. The fear that they have induces them in many instances to curtail their time in hospital to grasp at any chance to [ make a problematical living outside. | It-, tha* way tlie hospital difficulty is j added to. The whole system of hos- j pital service must be reconstructed; otherwise there will be a serious breakdown in our medical work in New Zealand. While, as in the case of too many members of a trade, there is not enough work for medical men in New Zealand, there is an added risk in our profession. Where work is scarce medical men will take on work they are not yet qualified for by experience: otherwise they will starve. Cliques will be formed among groups of doctors for their own prolection. Work will not necessarily be sent to the men best qualified to do it. Altogether, undesirable conditions will arise because of the fear of actual starvation. This is not in the best interests of the profession. There are excellent New Zealanders who have come back here after a sojourn in Europe only to leave again because there is not a possible chance of making a decent living, let alone giving them a margin to get away to Europe again, say, once in five or seven years, to check their experiences with those of doctors in the bigger fields of the Old World. Then again, a medical man has a right to earn enough to be able to give his sons the same education as he had himself. It is well known that few medical men are able to give their sons what they had themselves, and those who have done so have done it with great sacrifices and anxiety, only to find that there is no room for these lads in tho land of their birth. And why? Largely because nearly 90 per cent, of the bigger medical work in New Zealand is done in the public hospitals for no reward at all. The Labour party is advocating a State medical service. Well, it would be infinitely better than the present state of affairs. This free work cannot be done with the same zest or interest given to paid work. See how the rehef workers work! No man who is forced to work for nothing will take a pride in his work nor put forth his maximum effort. This may rouse a storm of indignation among some of my medical brethren. That storm i would be sheer hypocrisy. Medical men are men and not supernatural beings. I know no medical man who would refuse to help the necessitous poor, whereas to say that the people who seek gratuitous services at the public hospitals are necessitous poor is simply humbug and a lie. People who can run about in motor-cars (see the long line (>t motor-cars at the hos- j pital on visiting days!) or motor-bi-cycles are not poor. Schoolmasters do not teach the poor for no wages! To this extent it would be better to have fully paid medical men to attend folk with (say) incomes of £250 per annum and less in the public hospitals. That would settle the house-surgeon difficulty at once: it might well do away with the nece*sity for them, for the young graduates would join as juniors and work up just as members of other branches of the civil service would do. As an alternative to the State medical service a compulsory insurance scheme for all people in the country should be initiated, leaving the people the right to choose their own medical men and their own hospital accommodation. This would, in my opinion, be better than State medical service, but both would be preferable to the evils of the present state of affairs. A combination of the two might be tried where State-paid medical men would attend people with incomes of less than £3OO per annum, and the others could select their own doctors under a general insurance scheme, varying to a small degree in cost, according to their incomes and desires. We should then have a medical service freed from the ghastly anxiety of the last five years, and all would be sure of a living wage, a very desirable thing in a profession which deals in matters of life and death, and which is of vastly more Importance than the price of onions or whether the exchange rate should be at par or 50 per cent., for which experts are paid £7OOO a year! But then the bank account is of more importance than the preservation of human life. We spend millions in the destruction of human life, and we grudge a livelihood to men who are striving to save it. I might say more about this and about the patronage of quackery, but this is sufficient to start the public thinking about saving a profession which cannot —despite the opinions that we are a "powerful" trades union—help itself, I and never could. Lloyd George saved the medical profession in Britain, or at any rate the less fortunate members of it, and vastly improved the conditions under which it worked. The medical profession will not help itself. Medical men never have and never will combine, because they are essentially individualists, and it were perhaps better that they remain so for the good of the country.—Yours, etc., T. A. MacGIBBON, M.D. October 5, 1934.