Wanted: G.P.s

The old "horse-&-buggy doctor" could not travel fast, but he got around. Now, in many rural areas throughout the U.S., there is no doctor to call. The old general practitioners are dying out; young replacements are too few to cover the territory properly, even if they took to helicopters. Last week a group of worried Kansans, sparked by Dr. Franklin Murphy, dean of the Medical School of Kansas University, had a plan.

Kansas, predominantly rural, has grown about 25% in population since 1906, but has lost some 30% of its doctors. Half the doctors then practiced in country districts; today only 28% of them do. Dr. Murphy says that the average medical student is too poor to buy equipment and set himself up in a small town. He is also afraid of becoming "medically isolated," losing touch with the latest scientific methods. With 70 Kansas communities wanting doctors, Dr. Murphy feels that "isolation" is the real problem.

Under the proposed plan, which is backed by the Kansas Medical Society and the Kansas Farm Bureau Federation, the university medical school and the local communities will cooperate in a threefold program to attract young doctors to rural districts. First, with a $4,000,000 grant, which will be asked of the state legislature in January, the medical school will be expanded to graduate 100 doctors a year, instead of the present 80. Next, individual communities will set up the graduates in practice at a cost of some $15,000, which the doctors will pay back in installments. Lastly, a full-scale postgraduate program for practicing physicians will be launched: this year the medical school faculty will conduct a series of lectures in different parts of the state. The lectures will eventually be supplemented by thorough refresher courses at the university. The general practitioners will be encouraged to attend them every three or five years. "Thus," says Dr. Murphy, "each student entering the medical school will be told . . . that he is entering upon a 40-year educational program."

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