MEDICAL SCHOOL

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 98, 20 January 1936, Page 10

MEDICAL SCHOOL

Training Defended By Dean of Faculty SENATE DISCUSSION Importance of Maintaining High Standard Do.M IN lON S I’ECJ AL SEKVI CE. Dunedin, January 19. "It is very unfortunate that such a highly technical question as the details of medical education should be discussed in the public Press,” said Sir Lindo Ferguson, dean of the Medical Faculty of Otago University, when interviewed to-day in regard to the discussion on this subject which took place on Friday at the New Zealand University Senate meeting at Auckland. "I say this,” be continued, "inasmuch as the article published here throws a disparagement which is quite unjustified on the training which is received.”

No question was raised in the report. to the Semite which had not been carefully considered and discussed again and again by the faculty here, and the problems of medical education here and criticisms of it did not differ in any way from those of all other schools in the Empire. “In fact,” said Sir Lindo, “the present attack on the medical curriculum here is based largely on reports of committees at Horne which were published last year.” Standard Very High. The standard of the New Zealand medical degree ranked very highly, and, in the opinion of the faculty, that high standing was largely due to the thorough grounding which the school had always insisted upon in regard to fundamental subjects. As loug as the finished product was of high standard there could not be much wrong with the method' by which it was produced. Al the British Medical Association's .conference at Melbourne last year there had been a meeting of deans and leading teachers of all the schools of Australia aud New Zealand, and there had also been present representatives ol the Edinburgh school and the British General Medical Council. Many important matters had been discussed, among which was a suggestion that the training in pre-clinical subjects should be reduced. This.had elicited a distinct difference of opinion. The faculty of medicine at Sydney Univer sity had reported that it had recently passed a resolution recommending the cutting down of training in anatomy and physiology to five terms instead of six. This had promptly been met with information given by the dean of the Melbourne school that I lie same stop had been taken there, and the teaching of these subjects had been reduced to five terms and tried as au experiment for a period of .11 years, but they had. now reverted to the old practice and six terms were allowed.

“There are five different points mentioned in the report,” said Sir Lindo, “which apparently are to be referred to the Faculty of Medicine for a report to next year’s meeting of the senate, aud it is not fitting that I should express an opinion ou them until the faculty has considered them again, though, as I said before, they have been coutantly before us for some years past. The published reports of the senate meeting are calculated to create a very false impression in the public mind. The Medical School has, for the past 12 years, becu making use of clinical material in other centres for final year students, and it it fully alive to the debt it owes to the public-spirited action of the medical staffs of the other main hospitals in giving clinical teaching to these final-year men. It owes a debt, more especially to Christchurch, which was first to come to our assistance at a time when the Otago classes were very overcrowded. Wellington also has shown sufficient practical interest in the matter of medical education to provide residential quarters for final-year students. Clinical Work. “It is unfortunate that Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie should have quoted partial figures which are calculated to create a false impression. His statement that ‘there would be about 150 students taking clinical work in a hospital in which there were some SO medical and 130 surgical cases for teaching purposes,’ must have beeu made without his grasping fully the inferences to be drawn from it, as the report of the committee, of which he is a member, states that the number of beds in the hospital is 2SS, which number would be increased by 44 this month. He cannot be in ignorance of the position. As a matter of fact, the average number of occupied beds for the last nine mouths was 270. Mr. Mackenzie also says in the telegraphed report that 300 obstetrical cases in Dunedin would provide material for not more than 50 students for preliminary training. Actually the number of cases attended by students last year in Dunedin was 480. While I fully recognise Mr. Mackenzie’s desire to emphasise the larger amount of material available in the larger centres, I feel sure that, he did not intentionally misrepresent to this extent the condition of affairs here.

•‘The live points referred to the faculty will be considered again, but in the meantime I can say-definitely that the school here is quite capable of training to a high standard all the graduates that the Dominion can absorb. Provided Hie Government will find funds for increased facilities in making use of the material we have, we can, I think, meet all the demands of New Zealand for medical education for many years to come. The school is not complete in various directions, but is very good so far as it goes. Wc require further buildings for the extension of our pathology and publichealth departments; we require a library and further buildings for research laboratories, and we also need increased staffs for some departments, all of which would necessitate a more generous budget. It cannot be too widely known that a modern medical school represents an expenditure of £250,000 to £300,000 for buildings and equipment, and that the annual budget runs from £30,000 a year upward.

“New Zealand cannot afford the luxury of a second medical school until such time as the population is much larger than at present,” Sir Lindo concluded, "but with the expansion of our teaching facilities which we have pul forward to the Minister of Education we shall be perfectly capable of (raining to a high standard all the students likely to present themselves for possibly the next 20 years.”