TOO MANY “ MEDICALS”

Evening Star, Issue 21820, 8 September 1934, Page 12

TOO MANY “ MEDICALS”

METHODS OF LIMITATION DISCUSSED NO ENROLMENT BEFORE INTERMEDIATE EXAMINATION [Fiom Our Correspondent.] WELLINGTON, September 8. Reduction of the number of doctors in New Zealand is the aim of a conference between representatives of the British Medical Association, and a committee of the Senate of the University of Now Zealand, which is meeting in Wellington. ; The move, which has been taken by the British Medical Association, is duo to the fact that recent signs reveal that more students are entering for medicine at the University of Otago, and that the numbers now show a tendency to rise much past the totals which it is considered that the country is able to absorb. The figure which it is calculated that New Zealand can use, is forty doctors annually, but some years ago the number of students enrolled at the School of Medicine stood at between seventy and eighty per annum. The first effort to restrict the numbers to something approaching the needs of the country was made when the medical course was lengthened, and this produced its result, the enrolments falling at once; but since, the depression, the restriction in other spheres, particularly in law, has resulted in a marked rise in the totals once again. At a moment such as this, the very weapon which was employed to restrict the number of students, the lengthening of the course, appears as something in its favour, for, by the time a boy has finished his studies, the margin of years makes it probable that better times will have returned to the country. For some time past the British Medical Association has been discussing this matter of the future of the medical profesion, and recently it made advances to the Senate of the University of New Zealand and was given a date for a conference on the subject. Apart from the lengthening of the course of study, the university has now only one_ hope of restricting the number of medical students, and that is that they will misbehave themselves and be sent down. The present situation is that after they have passed their matriculation (or university entrance) examination students,, sign on as members of the Medical School, and after that, even if they fail in their medical intermediate examinations at the close of the first year, they cannot be prevented from sitting again. Even though it has been the practice to make this intermediate examination a stiff one, the number of medical students has not been lessened by this fact; the advance of some students has merely been delayed. Now it is proposed' that one of two methods of restriction shall be imposed. The first is that students shall not be enrolled as members of the Medical School until after this intermediate examination has been passed—that is until they have, in effect, been already a year at the school. The second is that there shall be a quota applied to entries, and that it shall be operated by the university on the basis of the niatriculation examination. This project suggests that the entry to the medical school shall be made competitive, and that a fixed number of places ' shall be available to those who pass' highest on the list of the university entrance test. In other words, the plan is that future medical students shall be chosen much on the same lines as entrants to the British Civil Service are to-day. The objection of members of the Senate to this second course is that it takes no stock of the ability of a man in particular directions. A student who did only moderately well in the university entrance examination, and was shut out from enrolling at the Medical School, would possibly be particularly gifted in some branches of medicine, and do well in them. The other plan seems to be viewed with more favour, especially as it is proposed that the first section of the medical examination shall also be subjected to the same plan—that it shall be competitive for the right to be enrolled at the Medical School. Under this proposal students may pass the examination and come too far down the list to be accepted for continuance of their studies to become doctors, but the year’s effort will not be wasted. For the conference has before it the suggestion that this first section of the medical examination shall, count towards the B.Sc. Thus the man who is successful in the examination, and yet does not come high enough to be enrolled at the Medical School, will have another course'open to him at once, and will not have undertaken his year’s study for nothing. The committee of the Senate which has been conferring with the British Medical Association on these proposals is to bring a report to the next meeting of the Senate of the University.