Training Doctors in Public Hospitals

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 264, 4 August 1936, Page 11

Training Doctors in Public Hospitals

Sir, —I would like to draw the attention of the public to undesirable features of the proposal put forward by the superintendent of the Wellington Public Hospital that sixth-year medical students from the Otago school should spend their final year in main-centre public hospitals, there to be coached by “certain members of the staff” who are to be given “the status of university tutors.” No doubt this proposal has been voiced in good faith. No doubt, also, it would have the effect of enabling a greater number of trainees to enter the profession. But it also means this, that the way will be open for hospitals to employ students for work that should be in the hands of qualified men. . One of the great weaknesses of the public hospital system as it exists to-day is that the rank and file of the medical staffs—the men who are doing the daily routine work of attending to patients—are men only just “through” who are still learning their jobs in the school of practical experience. Now it is proposed that youngsters of still less experience, without their degrees, should be drafted tn to take over patients. Hospital authorities should think twice before proposing to take such liberties with the efficiency of a vital community service.-! am. S” TCHFDL Wellington, July 31.