The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 17

Page 17 3 Tl IMDMTS DAVID McKNIGHT on doctors' workload 4 The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday, October 7, 1986 MM ready fftfwr -I 4 i -is. fitlliltlii Olga Masters "time was running lLate starter jwho wrote lit her way 1. 4 ft '''lis 4 4 i'A'tV, I LGA Masters, who died last 1 week at the age or 67, waited until she was in her late 50s and i 4 naa moinereu seven umuren i students "are so far in debt they don't mind a bit Debts of $10,000 to $15,000 are not uncommon on graduation, Peter says. But from doctors who studied medicine decades ago, there is a universal criticism that anatomy is not studied enough these days, he says. Dissection is not practised, with the students learning from already dissected corpses.

For students contemplating surgery as a specialist area, it makes the task a bit harder. Whatever the national inquiry into medical eduction does, it should ensure that students remain an integral part of teaching hospitals because of the value of "hands-on" education, Peter says. His course reflects some of the changes to medical education which the past decade has seen. Occupational health and safety issues, such as asbestosis and industrial deafness, now form a small part of his course, as do behavioural science on topics such as the specific health needs of ethnic or gay communities. Body language and the various schools of thought on how to question a patient were dealt with in this section of his medical education, which consists of three lectures a week for two years.

Hung-Singh Yang, a medical student at Sydney University, thinks that courses discussing sociological aspects of medicine should be taught later in the course in order to increase their value. Unfortunately, many students regard that aspect of their course as "a Clinical work does not begin until third year, but only then does the relevance of such questions begin to become apparent. The psychological aspect of the course strikes some students as a "humanities subject" and seems divorced from the more basic science of the early years of a medical degree, he says. The decreased time spent on anatomy doesn't greatly perturb Mr Yang, though anatomy is helpful in "knowing your own way around the human David Rowe, a fourth-year student from the University of NSW, says that possible oversupply of doctors is a cause for concern. "It's quite competi- 4 iV' HTlUSTRALlAN doctors often np work 60 or 70 hours a week, yet Jrr the threat of an oversupply of doctors has prompted the Federal Government to set up a national inquiry into medical education.

This puzzles Cathy Birman, a medical student from Sydney University, one of number who spoke to Agenda. She thinks "there's room for sharing the load a bit Horror stories of doctors working long hours are part of medical students mythology, but the students attitude to their profession has also changed, she says. Once a medical degree was a ticket to a high standard of living, whereas now doctors are "much more middle class," she says. Tipped to be headed by the Public Service Board chairman Dr Peter Wilenski, the inquiry will examine the question of oversupply and the broader one of medical education. Professor "Daily" Glover, Dean of the Medical School at the University of NSW, is sceptical of predictions about oversupply or undersupply of doctors.

Apart from previous predictions only a few decades ago which rang false alarms bells about a shortage of doctors, medical practice itself could change. With a different system, doctors may cease working an average of 60 hours a week and instead work 35 or 40 hours, like everybody else. We would then need more doctors, he says. Overwork, rather than oversupply, preoccupies the minds of students, particularly in Sydney, where their degree course was reduced to five years and is now being changed back to six. Peter Wright, who has just finished his final year of medical studies at Sydney University, has few criticisms of his education, but like many medical students welcomes the return of a six-year degree "mainly because it allows people to get their holidays back.

That's not just purely on the grounds of relaxation. Many find it financially arduous if they can't work in the long holidays." Medical education has also seen a growing move for final-year students to chase specific courses overseas or interstate. Though the courses are expensive, by this time most medical Picture by STUART DAVIDSON Fourth-year medical students at the Prince of Wales Hospital (from left) David Rowe, Chin Teh and Richard Totaro. then examines the functioning of the human body and then the diagnosis and treatment of disease. A different approach, used at Newcastle University, begins with a clinical problem (for instance, a case of heart disease) and asks "what sort of basic information is needed to solve this problem?" Newcastle's graduates are not noticeably different from the graduates of Sydney or NSW universities, he says.

Newcastle also pioneers another innovatory selection scheme. Medical students are all from the top 10 per cent, "but half of them, rather th-in being selected purely on academic merit, are selected from psychological tests and exposed to it. Most medical students come from a well-off background. They need to be exposed to the fact that not everyone lives in Turramurra and drives a Volvo." David Rowe does not support the return to a six-year course. "Five years is plenty long enough," he says.

Professor Glover says that added attention to behavioural and social sciences is part of the move towards a shorter, five-year medical course. "Community which includes but is broader than studying general practice, is a related trend. There are at least two different approaches to medical education, he says. One begins with medical sciences, tive and getting more competitive as far as specialty positions are concerned. If the oversupply continues it will make life difficult for everyone," he says.

A good aspect of UNSW's course, he says, is that experience in hospitals starts in second year with a few hours each week. But better integration of the practical experience with the theoretical study is important. Teaching in hospitals can be a bit patchy, he says, because students are taught by busy doctors whose time is at a premium. Feedback during the year by more frequent assessment would be another good idea, David says. Medical exams at the higher levels consist of both multiple choice tests and vivas, in which a patient is examined and diagnosed and the student is then interviewed by a panel.

As at Sydney University, some students take socio-medical courses on the problems of the handicapped and other minorities very lightly, he says. "Unless you are out there, dealing with these people, it can be pretty remote and much of it seems like common-sense." But as well "you get a lot of pretty hard-driving, competitive, type-A people to whom it just seems like irrelevant stuff, getting in the way of the interesting stuff, which is diseases and pathology "I think it's important that people are 1 The breakfast club catches on at last cj.r 1 1 1 1 1 tic ii 1 1 1 1. 1 nai a beautiful calm outside our place "if before beginning her terribly short but i highly successful writing career. Mrs Masters based most of her novels ind short stories on her own, often ordinary, experiences of growing up in southern NSW country towns. She was partly through her next book, a collection of short stories, at the time of her sudden death from cancer.

Olga Masters had eventually turned from journalism to writing because "time was running away and it was something I wanted to do all my Another influence had been the overwhelming response by readers of the suburban newspaper the Manly Daily to a front-page story she had written about her son, Roy, coach of the St George Rugby League team. Her assignment had been to write a "funny piece about football" on grand-final day. And she produced a piece of writing that struck a chord with many readers. It was this style that formed the basis for her fictional work. Mrs Masters, a short grey-haired woman with a booming voice, used to begin writing each day on her old Adler portable typewriter at 6 am.

She had two writing rooms, one overlooking the ocean, at the Masters' family house at Austinmer, near Wollongong. After a day of writing, she would go to bed as early as 6.30 pm to prepare for the next day. Sometimes she would get up in the middle of the night to write down ideas that had suddenly come into her head. Her newspaper training showed in her tightly written sentences, and short paragraphs. And again probably because of newspapers, she proudly never missed a publisher's deadline.

Mrs Masters likened writing to gardening, saying that you had to tend to it every day. It was important not to get out of practice. "All my writing is about human behaviour. There's not much drama, no great happenings in it. No violence.

It's 'about the violence that's inside the jiuman heart, I think, more than anything else," she had said in an interview. When she began writing, Olga Masters was concerned that her work was too simple to compete against the bright and much younger writers of the time. "I felt I'm not smart and slick," she told the at Sydney Festival early last year. "I am ordinary, very very ordi-nary." She had spent a long time attempting to change the first paragraph 7to her first story to make it more complex, but eventually gave up. "So that started me on my style of writing.

1 to myself, 'The best person you can be always is yourself. You can't copy anybody else and here I go for better or for worse. This is my style, I'll stick to it and I'll write it my way'." Mrs Masters had begun her working life as a reporter on The Cobargo Chronicle. But when she married a primary school teacher, Charles Masters, her journalism was placed aside until her eldest child, Roy, was 14. She then returned to reporting.

In 1979, she submitted her first two stories to The Sydney Morning Herald. One was accepted by the Herald and the other won a short story award worth $600 conducted by the Fellowship of Australian Writers in Queensland. The following year, Mrs Masters shared first prize with Elizabeth Jolley in another competition for a story. The Rages of Mrs Torrens. The competition's judge, the University of Queensland, then offered to publish a collection of 20 short stories under the title The Home Girls about the rural poverty of small-j town Australia.

This book, published in 1983, won a National Book Council prize, and her writing career- was established. And she was able to give up at least until 8 am. Not any more. The hideous tide of traffic is in full With a typewriter this smart, who needs a word processor? KEITH Canberra, ACT DUNSTAN Barbara, jfc. Great news! The boss has finally bought me Display: See what you're typing now, see what you typed last week and see what you're correcting, deleting and inserting.

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2 Barbara, The dream of all hard worlyng secretaries has no? 1 come true witn tnecsrotner tM-ai ijyou can now move, delete and copy blociw anywhere in the t(jT document you're wnrkiny. Now isn't that clever So clever, I think I'll be eaving the office oryCl 6 jT cry by 7.15 am. You can't even get across the road. Joggers who want just a modicum of air untainted by the awful internal combustion engine need to be out at 6. You wouldn't believe the number of haunted citizens who now leave for work at 7.30 am or earlier.

Among those high on the haunted list I find lawyers. It is a beautiful, rosy era for lawyers. I find people in advertising; those in take-over bids and those terrified of take-over bids, which makes almost everybody and those in PR. All such creatures are getting up earlier and earlier. They are into their concrete car parking tombs well before 8.

For some time we had been noticing that rather good breakfast houses had been opening here and there. Last week Herman Schneider got into the act. Herman is a Swiss who came here 30 years ago to cook for European teams during the 1956 Olympic Games. In Melbourne he opened Two Faces, which became recognised as very nearly the best darned restaurant in the land. Herman always believed utterly in fresh food in season.

So he would be seen daily soon after dawn buying his own food at the Victoria Market. Last year he thought he wasn't doing enough around the middle of the day, so he opened another restaurant in the city, Roesti, pitched directly at the businessman. Big success. Presumably he noticed there was an hour in the day that was absolutely doing nothing, so he had a new launching. He opened Roesti at 7.30 am Monday to Friday for the businessman's breakfast.

The theory is that the young merchant banker who has been chatting with Chase Manhattan since 4 am, dealing with Barclays in London at 2 am, persecuting the Australian dollar all night, might want a decent breakfast. So too will the barrister who had to get up early to do his homework for the backwash from the usual Brierley raid, and then there would be the Coles-Myer accountant who surely had bought his supermarket by 7.30 am. So Herman's breakfast is not 7.30 am drear. He caters for the terrified high blood pressurecholeresterol set with Swiss muesli and fruit, yoghurt and strawberries that comes in a stemmed glass. There are delicate, dreamy omelettes, items like eggs poached on cocotte with sauteed chicken liver, liver and bacon brochette with grilled potatoes and, would you believe, warm buckwheat blinis with smoked salmon and sour cream.

If you made half a million on the dollar overnight, you might want it with champagne. The trend towards breakfast is utterly American. I think the United States has much to answer for: the insidious spread of the TV commercial, Ronald Reagan, the cult of the automobile as a god, the nuclear bomb, Dallas and Dynasty, the tennis pro, Frank Sinatra and fried chicken, but its elevation of breakfast is a beautiful thing. time tonieht! I Vi I could go on forever riting about superb functions of thBrother lunchtim will soon be over. Time magazine made a survey some time back and discovered that 50 per cent of all American breakfasts are served outside the home.

In the US you never get this vile business of shoving breakfasts through the trapdoor in a motel bedroom. Why? Because there is always a place which serves wonderful breakfasts just round the corner. And they are so cheap. Over there you can get a breakfast which will blow your mind and your stomach for $2. For example, my stomach starts to twitch when I think of Sambos in Los Angeles.

As soon as you sit down a girl asks: "How you wan your aigs, honey, easy over or sunnyside up?" Easy over. "You wan hash browns?" Now, to my mind hash browns are one of the glories of the US, to be ranked on a par with Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. They are potatoes that have been shredded into fine strips, had the water squeezed out of them and then fried in the pan. Mmmmmmmm. Or, alternatively, the girl will ask you if you want a long stack or a short stack.

These are dreamy pancakes which come in layers. You put a blob of butter, maple syrup or blackberry syrup between each deck. If you order a long stack it comes about as high as the Berlin Wall. Now wait a minute. It doesn't finish there.

At Sambos you don't see villainous hot water blacked with instant powder, but glorious, black, real coffee, which keeps coming and coming and coming. So you can appreciate why Americans eat out for breakfast. This I think is great, but the Americans also eat out for commercial reasons. Herman Schneider thinks the businessman's breakfast is the ideal time to consummate the early-morning deal the lawyer for example, to talk to his client before the courts open. Restaurants are quieter and more talkable at 7.30 in the morning.

I don't know that I go for this. As The New York Times used to say, every morning the world is born anew. Breakfast should be a time of birth and beauty. Nothing awful, serious or cataclysmic should ever be decided at breakfast It is a time for restful contemplation. You can take it for granted that Mr Keating already has his eyes on it.

FBT almost certainly means Fringe Breakfast Tax. But as part of the brave new world, where the nation gets up early, I think he should give breakfast tax relief. Meantime, Herman, would you kindly add hash browns to the menu? Your coffee already is bliss. journalism for full-time writing, EM-811 $2,095 Recommended retail price (20K memory) Then followed Loving Daughters (the story of two country girls which began as I a short story and grew into a novel), A Long Time Dying a collection of stories set in a southern county town) and the yet-to-be published Amy's Children (about a mother who left her children on a farm during World War II while she went to Sydney to earn a living for them I all). I would like more details of JL the Brother EM-811 office electronic typewriter and the name and Perhaps Olga Masters -proudest achievements were her children.

She had intended to write a book for all seven of them: Roy, 44, a sports columnist and Rugby League coach; Ian, 43, a script writer In Los Angeles; Quentin, 40, who owns a film studio in London (he address of my nearest Brother stockist. Name: Address: Postcode: Telephone: produced The Stud, starring Joan Collins); Chris, 37, an investigative television reporter; Sue, 34, a script writer; I Deborah, 32, a former actress and now a ust)Pty Limited, JY Send coupon to: Brother Industries (A P.O. Box 398, North Ryde, NSW, 2113 OPTIONAL ACCESSORIES i i i a ii in' 1 researcher for a television current affairs program; and Michael, 25, who works for Quentin. i Her husband, Charles, said yesterday that Olga's death had been very sudden. She had eone to hospital after her FB-300 floppy disk drive for approx I80K of extra memory with every IF-30O Interface to turn your EM-811 into a high speed bi-directional computer printer.

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Tests revealed a brain tumour. MICHAEL LAURENCE.