Title: War Surgery and Medicine

Author: Stout, T. Duncan M.

Publication details: Historical Publications Branch, 1954, Wellington

Part of: The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945

This text is the subject of: ‘Something of Them Is Here Recorded’: Official History in New Zealand

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Training of Technicians

The first two General Hospitals reached the Middle East with each a single technician—partly trained in one case and slightly trained in the other—a fantastically inadequate provision, when it is known how much work fell on the hospital laboratories.

Not until 1943 was any attempt made to provide trained technicians from New Zealand (and then these were sent with rank already above those who had trained and worked long in the Middle East).

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Training of technicians was therefore carried out in all the General Hospital laboratories and proved very satisfactory. It must, however, be emphasized that a trainee is for a considerable time of no use—in fact, an encumbrance—in a laboratory, and that a nucleus of several trained (qualified) technicians is essential for the provision of a first-class laboratory service.