Doctors' Training Costs, incomes

Northern Advocate, 19 April 1947, Page 7

Doctors' Training Costs, incomes

(Special) AUCKLAND, This Day. The cost to an individual student, up to the time he graduates from the Otago Medical School was between £IOOO to £I2OO. In addition it costs the state £3500 to educate each student up to qualifying. These details were given in the Auckland Supreme Court yesterday to Mr Justice Callan by a medical witness (Dr D. A. Arnott). The average practitioner going into special security practice in New Zealand could make from £3OOO to £4OOO a year. If he went to England for postgraduate work he worked for about £IOO a year. Dr Arnott stated that he himself had worked in England for three years for less than £llO a year, which meant that he was buying experience and living on capital. He would say that the loss of expectation of earnings by pursuing a postgraduate course in England was about £3OOO a year. The capital cost of obtaining diplomas was approximately £350. It was all very interesting, remarked His Honor, but he thought there was one flaw in it. The witness had omitted to state what Mr Walter Nash would take out of the £3OOO. The witness said that men of his own year who had stayed in New Zealand were now financially independent.