MANAWATU DAILY TIMES. SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1920. WHEN DOCTORS DIFFER

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 1587, 12 June 1920, Page 4

MANAWATU DAILY TIMES. SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1920. WHEN DOCTORS DIFFER

There are many people in the Manawatu who will not approve of the “scheme” which the Hospital Board has adopted in connection with the medical staffing' of the public hospital, and they will disagree with it. a great deal more if it develops that its effect will be to shut out from the hospital competent and trustworthy local practitioners. The question is not what is the best or most congenial arrangement tor the doctors, or how much or how little the prestige and dignity of this or that individual is concerned, or how much, any existing "arrangement” may or may not be disturbed by' the disposition of the staff. None of these things matter a rap to the community. The sole question is; How can the sick and suffering be best provided for? "What arrangements can be made to ■ensure that the patients at the hospital can receive the most skilled and 'efficient and sympathetic treatment? That is really' the only thing that matters. Dr Whitaker, who enjoys two capacities: (1) as a member of the British Medical Association, and (2) as a member of the Hospital Board, is the self-confessed author of the new arrangement, and this is what ho had to say at the Board meeting on Thursday:

Dr. Whitaker said it was quite apparent that these doctors had not been present at all the meetings (of the 8.M.A.). and they did not know what had been going on. Every possible consideration had been given to their prestige. This was a. v.-ry difficult business, and he had based his scheme on the feeling that certain men in this town had conn here with a great deal of money and bought large practices, and had a lot of rich frjends to support them. There wore others not so fortunate, who had started practically without money, and it was these they wanted to help. The top dog should not receive all the consideration. There were some who were not capable of taking on surgery work in any largeTiospital. One of the doctors who had signed the letter had described surgery as a “bloodletting process,” and had no sympathy with it, believing that operations were useless. The wonder is that the Board which has been entrusted with the hospital administration should have listened to apparently with apathetic patience to this preegfrus diatribe. What concert 1 , was it of theirs whether a doctor had a fat or a lean purse, or was. in the opinion of his more or less prejudiced competitors a top or a bottom dog financially? Their concern as Boardsmen was none of these things. Their concern was to open the hospital doors as widely as practicable to the recognised leading men of the profession as is done in other hospitals all the world over. We know that certain doctors in this town have rendered magnificent and self-denying service to humanity in an honorary capacity at the hospital, and we think it is due to them that their services should be retained, but. anything which savours of a monopoly, or any scheme which shuts out from a patient passing through a life and death ordeal an outstanding practitioner ready and willing to render service—even though such practitioner be rich as Croesus —is a bad scheme, "and as such not to be countenanced.