Research Lack In Some N.Z. Hospitals Seen

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30176, 6 July 1963, Page 13

Research Lack In Some N.Z. Hospitals Seen

"New Zealand’s general practitioner service is very good, and its hospitals are good, but there does not seem .to be enough investigatory and research work in some of your hospitals,” Dr. A. Leatoam, a London heart specialist, said in Christchurch. “However we have the same problem in England.” Dr. Leatoam is cardiac physician to St. George’s Hospital, London, and physician and dean of the Institute of Cardiology at the National Heart Hospital in London. He is frere as the

R. T. Hall lecturer tor the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, with the Australian Heart Foundation sponsoring the visit. “For a hospital to have the spirit and atmosphere to advance, there must be investigatory work and research at that hospital,” Dr Leatham said. "Apparently your New Zealand health service does not provide for this. I am not sure that those who control this service appreciate that, for good medicine to be practised, there must also be investigatory work. "I am struck by the difference in atmosphere between a hospital where the work is entirely routine and one where there is also investigatory activity. Only a hospital of the latter kind can readily keep up with modern medicine,' “The work being carried out in the cardiac unit at the Green Lane Hospital, Auckland, impressed me greatly and when economic circumstances permit one hopes that similar centres can be established elsewhere. The cardiac team at the Green Lane Hospital is second to none in the world.”