“Attempt to lure doctors"

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32531, 15 February 1971, Page 14

“Attempt to lure doctors"

(N.Z Press Association?

AUCKLAND, Feb. 14.

A United States campaign, launched a few days ago, to attract doctors and medical students from New Zealand has met a mixture of alarm and resignation by Government officials and medical associations in this country. A private agency in Washington began a newspaper advertising campaign on Saturday, calling for physicians and medical students to train at American hospitals and initiating what one doctor called “a blanket attempt to lure large numbers of New Zealand doctors overseas.”

Dr W. N. Clay, Auckland president of the Medical Association of New Zealand, said that it viewed such an attempt with great alarm. Such a campaign, he said, would pose a distinct threat to New Zealand by possibly causing a further depletion in the ranks of doctors.

Dr Clay also feared that it could lead to many young and promising graduates going overseas to posts which, contrary to their expectations, would not provide a proper training and which

would prove inferior in calibre to the training facilities offered in New Zealand. The United States Embassy has reported from Wellington that the organisation involved in the campaign, the United States Physicians Placement Agency, is not a Government body. Mr C. C. Ranso, the Embassy’s cultural affairs attache, has cabled Washington for information about the agency.

He said, in an interview, that although overseas recruiting of medical staff has in the past been handled by private organisations, there was now a standard medical examination for any applicant applying for admission to a United States hospital. Many hospitals in the United States, as well as Government departments in Australia, Britain, Canada, and elsewhere, regularly advertise medical posts in the “New Zealand Medical Journal.”

Similarly, the New Zealand Department of Health and various hospital boards advertise overseas in an attempt to attract medical staff from other countries. However, these advertisements are almost always for specific post at a specific hispital ,and usually detail workconditions and the salary that can be expected. Dr D. Cole, associate dean of graduate studies at Auckland University’s Medical School, said today that there were very few hospitals in the United States which could offer better training than New Zealand hospitals. The United States held many attractions for postgraduate students in New Zealand “not the least of which is money” but Dr Cale said that students might not be sure where they would be posted. Unless they applied specifically for a post at one of the better hospitals, there was a chance that they would receive a training inferior to that offered in New Zealand.

In spite of grave concern expressed by several prominent medical officials at the present campaign, one organisation remained unperturbed. Dr Edrich Gerringer, national secretary of the New Zealand Medical Association, said the advertising campaign would not do much harm but might do some good in alerting public opinion to the critical state of the medical profession in New Zealand. He said, however, that’

(New Zealand still imported < far more trained doctors each ] year than it lost to other i countries, and freely drew on < the services of medical staff t trained overseas. New Zealand had gained, and was < still gaining, from the ex- t change, but there was never- c theless a continuing shortage 1 of doctors. t “If we want to have enough i

doctors we will just have to produce more,” he said. “That is the only way working conditions for general practitioners will be improved.” He found one disturbing aspect to the situation —that almost one-third of young doctors “find the situation in New Zealand so unattractive that they don’t want to stick around.”