HOSPITAL POSTS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 14

HOSPITAL POSTS

Junior Staff Needed

The North Canterbury Hospital Board was short not so much of house surgeons as of junior registrars, the board’s director of outpatient services (Dr. W. I. Paterson) said yesterday. He was commenting on a Press Association message from Hamilton saying that the Waikato Hospital Board is short of house surgeons. The North Canterbury board was short of. four junior clinical registrars out of an establishment of 13, and in addition there was one vacancy for a pathology registrar, Dr. Paterson said. The clinical vacancies were in psychiatry, plastic surgery, the genito-urinary department, and general medicine. The medical vacancy was at the Burwood Hospital. “We have been short of junior registrars for years,” said Dr. Paterson. But the position had improved greatly after the introduction two years ago of bursaries by which young doctors, on completing a total of four years as house surgeons and junior registrars in hospitals, could claim 12 months’ leave of absence on full pay to study overseas.

“The board would have been able to fill all its junior registrar posts this year if the Health Department had not had to take away some of the bursars to staff special area practices,” said Dr. Paterson. “We hope that next year our posts will all be- filled.”

If more house surgeons were also available, they, too, could be used, he added. Extra house surgeons were especially badly needed in general medicine and general surgery. Moreover, vacancies for one medical and one surgical junior registrar were filled temporarily by finalyear medical students.