Burwell Urges Action to Insure Competent Personnel For Medical Schools Crippled by War-time Restrictions

Unless action is taken immediately to counteract the effects of wartime restrictions, the medical profession will face an acute shortage of competent instructors and research personnel in the years immediately following the armistice, assorted C. Sidney Burwell, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, in his annual report released today.

Depletion of staffs, an accelerated program, and drastic curtailment of hospital training open to graduate students has handicapped medical schools since 1939, the report emphasized. From that time until the close of the war only a very few will have been able to receive the training in graduate schools and hospitals calculated to develop teachers and investigators.

Pointing out that a shortage of first-rate medical personnel already exists in teaching and research fields, Dean Burwell predicted that "the shortage will be more acute ten years from now unless plans are made for the avoidance of such a deficit."

Designed to aid in "the recognition of potential teachers and investigators while they are still serving in the Army and Navy," a fellowship program has already been drawn up by the University's Faculty of Medicine. Part of the funds of the Medical School have been allotted to a plan to provide good opportunities for talented prospects here.

Dean Burwell's report indicated a divergence from traditional practice stating that "the Medical School will not ask individuals to apply for these fellowships, but will itself take the responsibility of seeking men out and attempting to recruit them for academic medicine."

G.I. Bill of Rights to Aid

Men wishing to develop along special lines of practice will, declared the dean, provide a much larger group for whom opportunity must be provided. He expressed the belief that for these men the G.I. Bill of Rights would provide the solution. The responsibility itself will fall jointly upon the medical schools and hospitals.

The third problem the nation's medical faculties must face, said Dean Burwell, is that of offering "retraining courses for men wishing review and refreshment in the broader fields of medicine and surgery."