National medical service
1943-10-20 1943 1940s 15 pages -2- composed largely of academic professors will have to agree to reform itself. The treatment methods, and health outlook of the qualified doctors subsequently depend on their professional tuition in impressionable years. The sum total of communal health now depend...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
20 October 1943
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/DF82ACF2-6E91-4600-8F0B-946854F6415A http://hdl.handle.net/10796/ADF9DBF2-7250-4EFA-B1E9-BC4FCF4AD701 |
| Summary: | 1943-10-20
1943
1940s
15 pages
-2- composed largely of academic professors will have to agree to reform itself. The treatment methods, and health outlook of the qualified doctors subsequently depend on their professional tuition in impressionable years. The sum total of communal health now depends on medical teaching and insight, years ago. The subject of Industrial Medicine and Industrial Diseases, with its link-up with Factory Health Legislation and Workmen's Compensation etc. was not then included in the Medical Curriculum. Industrial Health is of the most vital importance to the workers. It has been consistently neglected. At the request of the lay General Council of the T.U.C. about 7 years ago, the G.M.C. recommended the inclusion of a course of lectures (number unspecified) to Final Year Students in the Curriculum of the Medical Teaching Schools. This had not been complied with even pre-war. There is not now one lecturer on Industrial Diseases or Industrial Health in any Medical Teaching School, as the only one at Sheffield previously in existence for a few years on a precarious endowment through employers' financing has been allowed to lapse (1939). This means that the newly qualified doctors to-day have not been taught Industrial Health. Many have no idea of the relation between Occupation or Industry and Health. For example, the Industrial Neuroses, such as Miners' Nystagmus or Telegraphists' Cramp as well as occupational phobias (fears) are simply not understood in the profession. Recently an Industrial Medical Department has been formed at the London Hospital, primarily for Industrial Poisons, and the Westminster Hospital Medical School have allowed for two years the Medical Adviser of the T.U.C. Social Insurance Department to deliver a short course of 6-8 lectures on Industrial Diseases and Health. 3. Medical Education, with its reflex on Industrial Health has been stressed because of its outstanding importance in any popularly controlled comprehensive National Health Service. The subject needs continual vigilance not only because of its effects on the tuition and training of the ancillary services (Nursing Welfare, etc.) but because of the supreme need of communal control. Professional education is still unnecessarily expensive in spite of State educational grants. Sufficient facilities, with scholarship endowment are not available to children of poor proletarian parents. The teaching schools, attached as they are to private Voluntary Hospitals (and not to Local Authority Hospitals or State Hospitals as in New Zealand) are allowed to discriminate in the choice or acceptance of medical students, the prejudice either of class or sex varying in different schools, without machinery for appeal or rehearing. No supervisory medical educational body exists for decisions on recruitment. Indeed the G.M.C. has no control over the teaching schools except on the question of the standard of medical tuition. Once the G.M.C. standard or requirements are reached or passed or recognised the teaching schools are master dictators in their own establishment. And the G.M.C. standard on its announced curriculum is the test of passing examinations to produce practitioners "of average skill and ability." Specialist tuition or knowledge or learning is for after qualification. And the G.M.C. has no power over post-graduate education or refresher courses. Once qualified, a medico need never attend another course in his life again or open a book or keep up-to-date and yet he can remain in practice in a changing advancing science-applying medical Art. Many medical schools still refuse women student applicants. The whole success of a good National Health Service may hinge on well planned Medical Education, constantly under review, with opportunities for specialist training and higher diplomas. There should be one portal to the profession through a recognised Final State Medical Examination. And Industrial Health should not only be treated as a specialty after qualification but should permeate the whole course of undergraduate education so that all medical
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |