SPECIALISATION AND DOCTORS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22317, 3 February 1938, Page 12

SPECIALISATION AND DOCTORS

♦ PRESENT TENDENCIES DEPLORED “SOUND GENERAL TRAINING NEEDED” The tendency for young doctors nowadays to specialise in one particular branch of medicine before they were properly conversant with. , the general training required to be a really good “family” doctor was deplored yesterday by a noted Lon- jr don surgeon, Mr E. C. Lindsay, in an interview with a representative of “The Press.” “There is too much tendency to specialisation at the present time,” said Mr Lindsay. “Doctors should have a thorough training to be sound general practitioners before they began to specialise; otherwise they will not be properly balanced. “The man who has got a good general training will inevitably be a sounder specialist than the man who specialises before he has gamed that sound general training.” Mr Lindsay said that students, after they had graduated and had received their first appointment, often endeavoured to do specialised work immediately, without first gaining a general knowledge of a doctor’s work. This in many cases led to a wrongful diagnosis of a disease. The specialist who was not first a general practitioner often diagnosed the root of the trouble to the organ which was his particular study, when the trouble might be caused by something entirely different. Specialisation was a danger if it was adopted too quickly by the young doctor, continued Mr Lindsay. What the people wanted was a good all-round doctor —even the wealthy classes were more satisfied with this —and this type of training was absolutely essential. New Zealanders in the medical profession wefe regarded highly in Great Britain, he continued. He referred to a recent vacancy in * large London hospital for a doctor, when one New Zealand doctor had been among the applicants. There had been some discussion about who should be appointed to the position." but the head surgeon had recommended the New Zealander, as. he stated, “no New Zealand doctor had ever let him down.”