TOO MANY DOCTORS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21305, 5 October 1932, Page 8

TOO MANY DOCTORS

COMPLAINT IN SYDNEY , PRACTITIONER'S WARNING At. a medical gathering in Sydney recently a 1 leading practitioner said that grave dangers attended the "overstocking" of the profession in New South Waks. He said that in England there was one practitioner to each 1100 people, in France one to each 1500; whereas in New South Wales the proportion was one to 780. Although the profession -was already overstocked, there were 160 students in firstyear medicine at Sydney University,' compared with 60 last year. As a consequence of the difficulty in finding employment during the depression, boys were being pnshed into the profession. The eventual overcrowding would not make for efficient work, a high standard, or good treatment. Parents should be allowed to know what they were doing in pushing young men into medicine. Unless something was done, the profession would be flooded with men who might be driven into unscrupulous practice by the fierceness of the competition. The speaker added that it seemed to lum wrong that medical men, immediately they had graduated, should to perform any operation without, supervision. Without any injustice to the present practitioners, future graduates, he thought, should have to pass through some probationary stage before they were allowed to undertake difficult operations. Dr. Colvin, M.L.C., who wfls a guest of honour, said that in the next 50 yi?ars some kind of change in medicine was coming. The whole of the social system was changing. It would be better for the profession to recognise that such a change was coming and to make its own changes from within than to wait for them to come from outside.