Doctors' Dilemma

P: Army & Navy doctors, still stuck over seas, griped when they heard a rumor (only partially true) that 1,600 men who had just got their medical educations free under the armed forces' training programs had been discharged without having to serve at all. (The overseas doctors had hoped that the 1,600 new doctors would relieve some of them.)

P: Forty-one doctors at the A.A.F. Regional Hospital at Camp Truax, Wis., griped that they were "political prisoners of war," unnecessary to the Army, necessary to their civilian patients.

Most uniformed doctors feel like griping -- and yet they may be the lucky ones. Thus far, the doctors who have come home have found trouble.* Some typical troubles reported last week:

In New York City, an ex-major, his family and his medical supplies were evicted onto a Brooklyn sidewalk to make room for a new tenant. An ex-commander lives and practices in a furnished room while he looks for home and office space. An ex-lieutenant colonel was offered a nice set of rooms for $3,000 a year, if he would pay a bonus of $6,000 cash. A Greek doctor (one of the ten or so who serve New York's 60,000 Greeks) cannot practice because the only places he can find have no water and need perhaps $3,000 in repairs to be paid by the tenant. He advises doctors in the Army to stay there. Only 100 of the city's 500 returned dentists have found anywhere to practice.

In Chicago, the Daily News last week printed 328 addresses of returned doctors to help their patients find them. Most of the addresses were homes. Dr. John J. Dwyer 1) found his old apartment house no longer available for doctors' offices; 2) learned that a former medical building was now full of lawyers and optometrists; 3) made an architect laugh when he suggested remodeling a store; 4) made a contractor laugh when he suggested buying and fixing up a building for doctors' offices; 5) wound up in a dentist's tiny storeroom.

In San Francisco, part of the trouble is that an approximate one-third of the service doctors would like to settle down in California after the war. San Francisco is trying to shoo the outlanders away.

* The Army has already dismissed 16,400 of its 45,000 doctors, has released 3,800 of its 15,000 dentists.

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