Urges Cooperation To Get Best Doctors

Northern Advocate, 15 March 1947, Page 4

Urges Cooperation To Get Best Doctors

(Special) KAIKOHE, This Day Elaborating views outlined before hi: own board earlier this week, the medi cai superintendent of the Whangaro; 35 County Hospital, Mr C. S. Williams ■d FRCS (Edin.), spoke at length befort 10 assembled delegates of five Norlhlanc •k hospital boards, chairmen and secre iaries, in Kaikohe yesterday. Mr Williams suggested that tht lr boards should cooperate .with each other to raise their medical services Cooperation should bo both rnedica and financial. )l He urged that Whangarei was highly suitable for use as a base hospital sur--11 rounded by cottage hospitals. He ” believed the lead should be'taken by i> laymen since they controlled the purse>f strings. is In the past, parochialism had been r e major factor in preventing this natural ■s trend from coming to pass, r "You must offer your young doctors ” high enough salaries to relieve them ol :- the commercialism that is today de- >- teriorating medical practice," Mr it Williams stated. "I am suggesting a cooperation of hospital boards amounting to amal- ® { gamation, and a salaried service—provided the salary is attractive enough. '' "Offer your doctors, say. a year's s post-graduate course in England every five years, provided they undertake to “ give you another five years of service. ? "You would get the cream of the medical schools to come here and keen as mustard to earn the rewards you offered them. "By such means, wc could keep their brains in the North. We could get them willing to forget all about the Social Security seven-and-sixpences." j IMPROVE MEDICAL SERVICE . The system would be one where the ’ boards set out to train their own specialists, he said. It would have many advantages, not the least must be the raising of the standard of medical service to the community. 1 Speaking on 'a general rule basis, he said, it was usually admitted that the farther one went from a city the poorer 1 i the pay and. consequently, the poorer ' the medical man. Of course, there would always be the exceptions where excellent men of high ability and qualifications chose of their free will to live in outlying localities. "I am absolutely' convinced the thing could be worked," concluded Mr Williams. "I know the department is thinking about these things. The medijcal service also has ideas like that at the back of its mind. “We know that medical men cannot live satisfactorily' under today’s conditions, when taxation takes such a tremendous proportion of their incomes. "Certain it is that they cannot j afford—and it is the younger men who should do it—to forfeit a year or two’s earning capacity to further their studies overseas for the benefit of the New Zealand community'. "Give your young medical men enough pay' and inducements and you'll get—and keep—the best there are in the land,” he declared. Mr J. A. S. Mac Kay (Whangarei) and Mr J. W. Hoskins (Mangonuii spoke i their thanks to Mr Williams for his j ideas, and all delegates displayed a keen interest in his views and suggestions. Mr Mac Kay made it plain that his personal objection to salaried medical j men was based principally' on the J belief that such a system “would drive i our best men away into districts where they could earn more by private practice.”