New Hope

"There are many competent physicians in the United States who have come to our shores as refugees. Many of these could be made immediately available for service in areas where the shortage is acute, if they could be licensed to practice. We should consider the possibility of combining self-interest with hospitality and giving all these doctors who are qualified an opportunity to help meet the growing shortage of medical personnel."

Thus last week in the Journal of the

American Medical Association, Surgeon General Thomas Parran stated bald facts about one of the most ticklish topics in medical circles--the question of licensing refugee doctors.

Of some 6,000 doctors who have fled from Hitler's Europe to the U.S., 3.500 have been licensed to practice. A few are eminent research men like the University of Chicago's Rudolf Schindler, University of Pennsylvania's Fritz Lewy, Bacteriologist Ernest Witebsky of Buffalo. But most have forsaken their specialties to become hard-working general practitioners--often in doctorless farming communities.

Because doctors are so badly needed in many countrysides, refugee physicians find it easy to work into the life of their new home towns. Sometimes doctors are wanted so much that a village will pay a refugee's expenses to settle there. One town meeting in New England voted $600 to settle a refugee doctor in their town, only to have the State Medical Board refuse him a license, though he was qualified to practice in New York.

Many of the 2,000 qualified but unlicensed refugees have had similar experiences. Thirty-nine States have laws or rulings of their State medical boards which virtually bar foreign-born or foreign-trained physicians. Some will license a foreign graduate only after he has repeated his studies in this country. And last month the National Board of Medical Examiners (whose standard examinations qualify for licenses in 43 States, the District of Columbia and four Territories) ruled that it would examine only graduates of U.S. schools.

A principal (though seldom-stated) reason for these rulings is the fear of U.S. doctors that they will be faced with foreign competition. If designed merely as necessary precautions against quacks and incompetents from abroad, the rulings exceed their purpose. Their chief result has been that, while the U.S. desperately needs doctors for military and civilian service--particularly in rural communities--trained physicians are idle or working as elevator boys, male nurses, salesmen. To such unshingled doctors--and to those who need them--the Surgeon General's words brought a new hope.

The Journal of the American Medical Association reported last week that in 1941 U.S. hospital facilities increased by 98,136 beds, more than three times the annual increase for any other year in history. Reasons: more service hospitals, more civilian money for medical care.

Hospitals, according to the report, were more efficient too, hustled patients out in an average of twelve days, two days less than the average hospital stay in 1935. Estimated savings through speedup: $85,000,000.

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