“Recommendations On Right Line”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29182, 18 April 1960, Page 12

“Recommendations On Right Line”

(New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, April 17. The proposed higher salaries for house surgeons should be an important factor in encouraging them to remain in hospitals longer than the customary two years, said Professor E. G. Sayers, dean of the Otago University Medical School This and other recommendations made by the committee set up to inquire into the house surgeon position were on the right lines to relieve the shortage. Professor Sayers said. The committee considered that if house surgeons could be encouraged to stay longer in hospital service the immediate shortage would be relieved. An improved salary scale, particularly for the third and later years as junior medical officers, was being urgently considered by the medical officers* salaries advisory committee, the Minister of Health (Mr Mason) said last week.

Professor Sayers said the committee’s suggestion of postgraduate bursaries for overseas studies to junior medical officers who had completed four years’ hospital service would be an added encouragement. Many house surgeons were married by their third year and the recommendations for improved amenities for the increasing number of married house surgeons would be another incentive, he said. Professor Sayers emphasised that a shortage of house surgeons was not peculiar to New Zealand. It was causing concern in the United States, Canada, and in. the provincial hospitals of Great Britain.