CLEARING HOSPITAL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 227, 8 July 1941, Page 3

CLEARING HOSPITAL.

RETURNING SICK AND WOUNDED. (P.A.) WELLINGTON, July 7. With accommodation for 28S patients, the Department of Health’s clearing hospital in Wellington for the returning sick and wounded of the armed forces is now officially ready for occupation. It is being staffed by a medical superintendent, Dr. D. Macdonald Wilson, a matron, Miss Moore, of the Health Department, 12 sisters, and 60 voluntary aids of the Red Cross Society, of whom a few are males.) The hospital is not intended for continuous occupation by the patients, and the length of stay there is expected to be no more than four or five days. Walking caseij will be sent to their homes as soon as possible, and others kept there only until sent to hospitals in their own districts. The voluntary aids have done three months’ training at. the Wellington Hospital, and those who, under Mrs Marshall McDonald, will do kitchen and cooking work, and waiting at tables, have had an institutional cooking course at the Wellington Hospital. These voluntary aids will be paid a nominal wage while employed, varying from Is to Is Gd an hour. Their services will noLbe required full time, as the hospital will be open only at such periods as it is required, namely, after the arrival of sick and wounded. No staff, except the caretaker, will sleep on the premises. The sisters are mostly former nurses who have been temporarily out of the profession through marriage oi* other reasons. The hospital has taken three and alialf months to erect, and 75 per cent, •of it is in heart timber. There is a frontage of 600 feet to Aotea quay, with a. central administration block and six wards, each to accommodate 48 patients. Three hundred can be taken if necessary. There is a special railway platform at the rear of the hospital, where patients can be removed from or on to railway hospital carriages. The four at present doingservice in the North Island are now drawn up at this platform. Stretcher cases can be taken by this means from the ship’s side to the hospital.