Plan For Better Medical Standard

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31656, 17 April 1968, Page 10

Plan For Better Medical Standard

A programme for the coming year aimed at improving standards in all branches of medical practice in New . Zealand and the South Pacific was decided on by the New Zealand Postgraduate Medical Federation at its annual meeting in Christchurch.

The federation plans to finance six-week overseas tours by two New Zealand doctors who would tour the country on their return, giving their new knowledge to colleagues. It will finance a fellowship for medical practitioners working in the. South Pacific islands, enabling a doctor to spend six months working m a major New Zealand hospital to the benefit of his own people on his return. Visits to island territories by New Zealand specialists at the request of territories concerned will also be financed. In addition, the federation plans to finance brief lecture tours within New Zealand by doctors recently returned from overseas study leave. It will arrange two sponsored lectureships, each of three weeks, to enable prominent Australasian specialists to work and lecture in a variety of New Zealand hospitals. Five sponsored visits by New Zealand general practitioners to selected courses in postgraduate medicine in New Zealand or Australia will be arranged. The federation has 16 member or associate member post-graduate societies or committees throughout New Zea-

land, and its headquarters office is entering the second year of its term in Christchurch.

During the last eight years of its existence, the federation has enlarged the scope of its activities. Its objects are the encouragement, advancement and co-ordination of all aspects of post-graduate medical education. Funds come from a variety of donors and from doctors themselves. In a statement, the federation also announces plans for arranging, in conjunction with the N.Z.B.C. Medical Television programmes for nationwide coverage for New Zealand doctors. It will also publish a medical diary of post-graduate events for the year, and other booklets of help to medical graduates beginning postgraduate studies. The federation says that it will also be involved financing and organising tours of the country by many other prominent medical visitors able to lecture to doctors locally. “All these activities,” says the federation, “have as their final aim the improvement of standards in all branches of medical practice in New Zealand and the South Pacific area. They are the result of effort by doctors themselves involved all over the country in an honorary capacity." Officers elected were: Chairman, Mr H. E. H. Denham (Christchurch, re-elected): secretary. Dr D. I. Chisolm (Christchurch, re-elected): treasurer. Dr E. E. Hannah (Christchurch, re-elected): executive committee, Mr D. S. Cole (Auckland), Dr I. A. M. Prior (Wellington, re-elected); and Mr J. Borrie (Dunedin, reelected).