Scottish Anaesthetist Discusses Training Facilities For Doctors

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27632, 13 April 1955, Page 17

Scottish Anaesthetist Discusses Training Facilities For Doctors

Adequate teaching facilities m large hospitals were strongly urged in an interview yesterday by a distinguished medical visitor to Christchurch, Dr. John Gillies. Dr. Gillies was told of the decision by the Hospital Boards’ Association at its last annual conference to seek Government authority for the building of lecture theatres for the instruction of undergraduate and graduate staff members. The development of air transport and the decentralisation of teaching in the last 30 years were put forward by Dr. L. C. L. Averill, who moved a remit on this subject at the conference, as the main reasons for better teaching facilities outside Dunedin. Many distinguished visitors now lectured in each of the main hospitals, but there was no authority for boards to provide the amenities needed, said Dr. Averill. The distinction between teaching and non-teaching hospitals was not rigid in Britain, said Dr. Gillies; a member of the staff of a non-teaching hospital might also hold an appointment at a teaching, hospital, and in this way his knowledge was passed on to other members of his staff. He could see the need for adequate teaching facilities in the more scattered hospitals in New Zealand, where the British system did not apply.

“Medicine, in its many specialties, is developing so fast that it is difficult for a man to keep abreast of his subject merely by reading,” said Dr. Gillies. “It is now, more than ever, an advantage for a medical man to be able to learn at first hand from visiting specialists of the latest advances in his subject. This personal instruction is important in the spreading of knowledge and the maintenance of a uniform standard of knowledge throughout the world.” Dr, Gillies is the J. Y. Simpson

Reader in Anaesthetics at the University of Edinburgh, where he is in charge of a large clinical research organisatipn. He is visiting Australia and New Zealand at the invitation of the Australian Society of Anaesthetists. A former president of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, he was anaesthetist to the late King George VI. He is the author of a standard textbook on his subject, and of numerous

articles in medical journals. Although his name appears next to that of Sir Harold Gillies in “Who’s Who,” and he has met the famous New Zealand plastic surgeon, Dr. Gillies is no relation. Although there are many New Zealanders—including at least three other medical practitioners—of the same name, Dr. Gillies has no relatives in New Zealand. Much of the recent work of which Dr. Gillies is in charge is concerned with induced hypo-tension—the prevention of loss of blood during operations. “By avoiding the need for transfusions, more intricate surgical operations are facilitated,” Dr. Gillies explained. “We are also interested in the latest technique of producing low temperatures in a patient—often wrongly called ‘refrigeration’—particularly for operations on the heart and pram, when it may be necessary temporarily to stop the circulation. “Some of the important recent advances in surgery have been dependent to some extent on these new adjuncts to anaesthesia,** said Dr. Gillies.

Yesterday Dr. Gillies met Christchurch members of the medical pro-fession-most of them anaesthetists—and visited several Christchurch hospitals. Last evening, he addressed Christchurch members of the New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists. He will leave today for Dunedin.