HOSPITALS WITHOUT AVAILABLE HOUSE STAFFS

Abstract

To the Editor:— We at St. Clare's Hospital are studying the problem of how to run a 150-bed general hospital without available house staff. This problem has interested us for several years. We have been functioning, as many other hospitals have, with foreign residents, usually men who have left approved resident training programs and are awaiting citizenship. We have been unable to obtain an approved general practice residency program. Thus, we fall into the large group of hospitals with an unapproved, but active, teaching program. Because of this we have been able to have a staff of five resident physicians, but we anticipate that, because of the new examinations for foreign graduates and the decrease in the available positions from foreign countries, we may be faced with the same dilemma that many other hospitals are facing today, namely, that we will have no resident physicians, or, at the most, one