FOREIGN DOCTORS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 3 June 1938, Page 14

FOREIGN DOCTORS

ENTRY INTO DOMINION GUARDING AGAINST LARGE INFLUX The assurance that the Medical Council of New Zealand was fully aware of the possibility of a large influx of foreign doctors who had been expelled from Germany as the result of the activities of the Nazis against the Jews, and that steps would be taken, if necessary, to regulate the number allowed to practise, was given yesterday by Dr W. Newlands, the president of the council. The council, he said, could , either require them to complete the whole six years’ course in the Dominion or prohibit them from practising altogether. / Two years ago the Medical Council decided that a foreign doctor should attend the Otago Medical School for three years and pass the required examinations before being ‘ admitted to the New Zealand register. Prior to that he was compelled to sit only the final year’s examination. The conditions which now obtain in the Dominion are being embodied in the new I ledical Practitioners Bill by the New ■ South Wales Government, as it is believed that many doctors of German Jew extraction are hoping to commence practising in Australia. There were at present. Dr Newlands said, four foreign doctors practising in New Zealand, who had been admitted under the conditions which ruled two years ago, and it was believed that a stiffening of the qualifications of three years would stop any great number of applications, but since then there had been several foreigners who had entered the country to study and qualify under the new conditions.