Heilbrigðisskýrslur - 01.12.1938, Page 167

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6.000.00 to kr. 12.000.00, but only very exceptionally above that
amount. Of these amounts the fixed salaries in the smallest districts
are about kr. 4.500.00 but about kr. 2.500.00 to kr. 3.000.00 in the larger
ones increasing gradually up to kr. 3.500.00 to kr. 4.000,00. The physi-
cians of the smaller districts also enjoy several advantages beyond
other doctors in that they live at a comparatively low rent in houses
belonging to the districts, and besides this the cost of living is in other
respects lower in the out-of-the-way districts.
Doctors other than District Physicians, receiving Public Salaries.
Doctors paid by public funds other than the district physicians are
such servants of the State as have been mentioned above, the professors
and lecturers in the medical faculty of the University, and permanently
appointed doctors in the larger State and district hospitals. In addition,
medical practitioners are engaged for certain extra posts in public
service, viz. the specialist in charge of the State Free Clinic for Venereal
Diseases in Reykjavík, assistant physicians at State hospitals, school
doctors, poor relief doctors, ete. The salaries of doctors who are
entirely in the service of the State range up to kr. 12.000.00 a year.
Private Practitioners.
In addition to the district physicians and doctors who are mainly
in public service there is a fairly large number of private practitio-
ners in Reykjavík (more than 40) and about 15 in other places
in the country. These figures do not include hospital internes who on
graduation do service in hospitals before being able to get permission
to set up their own practice. Various of these doctors have been re-
cognized as specialists (internal medicine, surgeons, eye-specialists,
ear, nose and throat specialists, alienists and neurologists, specialists
in female diseases and gynæcologists, X-ray specialists, physio-thera-
peutists) but very few here in this sparsely populated country have
large enough scope to be able to devote themselves solely to their
speciality. Most of them, therefore, have a general practice together
with their special practice. The incomes of private practitioners natural-
lý vary a great deal according to the number of patients consulting
them. Some of those who have the largest practices are undoubtedly
among the persons enjoying the highest incomes in the country. The
young doctors seem to be inclined to prepare themselves to become
Private practitioners in the towns, and then first and foremost spe-
cialists in Reykjavík, in preference to becoming district physicians,
because of 50 graduates who have not yet settied down to any fixed
Work, a large majority is studying some specialitv either in Iceland
or abroad, and it is as yet rather difficult to fill vacancies in the
medical districts. On the other hand one must feel some anxiety as to
the immediate future of the medical profession due to the prospec-
tive tremendous increase of private practitioners in the towns and
espeeially in Reykjavík.