HOSPITAL SPECIALIST AWARDED TRAVELLING SCHOLARSHIP FOR N.Z.

Wanganui Chronicle, 20 October 1950, Page 4

HOSPITAL SPECIALIST AWARDED TRAVELLING SCHOLARSHIP FOR N.Z.

Tuberculosis officer for the Wanganui, Patea, Hawera and Taumarunui Hospital Boards, Dr. W. A. Priest, has been awarded a travelling’ scholarship under the Wunderly Foundation ol the Royal Australasian College ot Physicians. He is the first New Zealander to be granted the scholarship. Dr. Priest hopes to spend a year abroad doing post-graduate study of thoracic disease in Britain. Scandinavian countries and Australia.

The Wanganui Hospital Board, at its monthly meeting yesterday, congratulated Dr. Priest and agreed to grant a year s leave of absence to take up the scholarship. Two of these scholarships were granted annually to either an Australian or a New Zealander, said the chairman, Mr D. D. Simpson. “This is a very great compliment to Dr. Priest, ’’ he added. Dr. Priest is married, with three children. He was educated at the Otago Boys’ High School and qualified at the University of Otago in 1933. After a year as a house surgeon in the Dunedin Hospital, he served in the New Plymouth Hospital for two years.

For one year Dr. Priest was on the staff of the Cashmere Sanatorium, Christchurch, followed by two years at the Waipiata Sanatorium Central Otago. Dr Priest, served for three years with the Royal New Zealand Air Force during the recent war. Since April, 1944, he has been chest physician and tuberculosis officer for the Wanganui and neighbouring hospital boards, and also for the tuberculosis sanatorium at Gonville.

Under the Wunderly Scholarship the scholar agrees to engage in the post-gradutae study of thoracic diseases abroad for at least one year and not more than three years, and on return to New Zealand to devote the whole or majority of his time to the investigation, treatment and prevention of thoracic diseases.

Wunderly Travelling Scholarships have been endowed for the purpose ot post-graduate education and training abroad of young physicians in the diagnosis and management of thoracic diseases, and the award is made by the executive committee of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, in consultation with Dr. and Mrs Wunderly during their lifetime. The committee has discretionary power to make no award if it is of the opinion that no applicant is of sufficient merit.

It is not a condition of the award, but it is the desire of the founders of the college that each holder should, within ten years of his return to Australia or New Zealand, be given the opportunity to contribute whatever he may think fit to a fund which would make available in perpetuity similar scholarships when the Wunderly fund will have been exhausted., Dr. Priest intends leaving the Dominion about the end of January. A definite itinerary has not yet been planned.