Clinical school for Wellington

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 2

Clinical school for Wellington

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 26. The Wellington Hospital Board will co-operate with the Otago Medical School by accepting a clinical school at Wellington Hospital.

The board passed a resolution accepting the Government’s decision not to approve the setting up of a third medical school, at a meeting last night.

However, the resolution also recorded the board’s reservations about the “inherent imperfections of a divided scheme of teaching medical students” and urged that the matter be considered further.

A copy of the resolution will be sent to the Prime Minister (Sir Keith Holyoake), the Minister of Health (Mr McKay), the University Grants Committee, and the Chancellor of Victoria University. The resolution was moved after discussion of a policy and finance committee report on the issue, and the reading of a letter from the

chairman of the Wellington Hospital medical staff (Mr J. A. Baird) by the board’s chairman (Dr G. Mac Lean). In the letter Mr Baird said that the medical staff deplored the decision of Government and the University Grants Committee to set up a second clinical school in preference to a third medical school.

However, the medical staff could no longer advise the board to reject the invitationof Otago University,

provided that conditions acceptable to the medical staff were included.

The Hospital Board’s resolution was passed by eight votes to seven..

The North Canterbury Hospital Board had considerable privileges in autonomy and appointments, and if Wellington could not have a medical school it should ask to be treated similarly, said a Wellington board member, Mr B. L. Dallard.

The board’s resolution included the statement that acceptance of a clinical school at Wellington Hospital “be subject to qualifications in respect of autonomy as were agreed with the North Canterbury board.”