INTERN SHORTAGE

To the Editor:—  In the past 10 years, hospitals have suffered from a shortage of interns and residents. In many cases, they have tried to solve the problem by increasing the work load of their house staff, increasing salaries, or by unethical competition for persons to fill those posts. These may temporarily solve an individual hospital's problem, but, in the long run, they work to the detriment of the house staff, lower educational standards, and lower general hospital medical standards.It is proposed that committees that regulate and pass on approved residencies and internships attack this exploitation more definitively. It is dishonest for a hospital with nine approved internships to assign all of its patients to the four interns it can attract. Committees have established definite elastic standards of patient load that a resident can carry and have sufficient time for study, conferences, ward rounds, and all the necessities of