Four new specialist hospital posts

Press, 10 July 1985, Page 9

Four new specialist hospital posts

Canterbury will get four new hospital specialist registrar posts because of funding announced yesterday by the Minister of Health, Dr Bassett. Dr Bassett announced funding for an additional 22 registrar posts in radiology, geriatrics, ear nose and throat surgery, ophthalmology, and radiotherapyoncology. The funding will be provided by the Health Department rather than from hospital boards’ normal allocation. The Canterbury Hospital Board’s new posts will be in geriatrics, ophthalmology, and two in radiology. Dr Bassett said the new posts were an expansion of the scheme under which 15 psychiatric registrars had been funded in recent years. The funding would be provided by the Health Department because of the importance of getting registrars into the training pro-, grammes, Dr Bassett said. The Auckland Hospital

Board will receive six posts; Waikato, four; Wellington, four; Otago, two; and Palmerston North, two. The Auckland postd will be in critical care, radio-therapy-oncology (two), ear nose and throat, geriatrics, and ophthalmology. Waikato will receive two in radiology and one each in E.N.T. and dermatology. Wellington’s posts will be in E.N.T., radiology, geriatrics, and ophthalmology. The Otago posts will be in radiology and geriatrics, and Palmerston North’s in geriatrics and psychiatry.

“In addition to the funding of these 22 posts, two registrars will be able to attend the venereology courses in Liverpool or London,” Dr Bassett said. The move was intended to take some pressure off hospital specialist categories with the most serious staffing difficulties. “Further increases will be needed in these and other specialities and I am looking at ways of providing them. Later in the year I will announce measures to improve staffing levels of hospital specialists in some of the smaller hospitals,” he said.