TWO MEDICAL SCHOOLS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29192, 30 April 1960, Page 12

TWO MEDICAL SCHOOLS

Sims Professor Stresses Need

(New Zealand Prett Association, AUCKLAND, April 29. The necessity for providing a second medical school in Auckland, particularly in view of the shortage of specialists, was stressed by Professor John McMichael today. Professor McMichael, who is on a Sims travelling professorship, is professor of medicine at the University of London and director of the department of medicine in the Postgraduate School.

With the growing population of New Zealand there were not enough house surgeons to staff the hospitals, he said. Auckland had already been accepted by the Government as the site for the next medical school, and the sooner it was established the better.

Professor McMichael said he stood by his former criticisms of hospitals already built. He said in Wellington that New Zealand hospitals were designed for the medicine of a generation ago and lacked the provision of laboratories and examination rooms.

“To build two hospitals in a city the size of Duned'in. was just plain stupidity," he said.

The important thing was cooperation in planning new hospitals now between the authorities in Wellington and local doctors. he said. They would then be in a position to make plans for the medicine of the future. Professor McMichael reiterated that in order to get the best doctors to become specialists they should be paid more. It was not fair for them to delay by years their full capacity to learn and find that their pay was below that of the less highly qualified general practitioners.