NIGHT MEDICAL SERVICES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 225, 23 September 1941, Page 6

NIGHT MEDICAL SERVICES

THOSE unfortunate enough to require urgent medical aid at night or at the week-end know something of the difficulties they have to overcome. The doctors recognise them, too, and the Auckland division of the B.M.A. has frankly admitted that the shortage of practitioners renders it physically impossible for them to cope with the problem. They have suggested as a way out that the Hospital Board should appoint one doctor for urgent night duties and that the B.M.A. follow this up with a rota of assistance from its members in order to bring the service up to full requirements. The Hospital Board does not like the idea. It fears that the appointment of one man in the city, at a cost approximating £1000 a year, inclusive of car allowance and depreciation, would be followed by demands for similar appointments in the outer suburbs, thus building costs up into the neighbourhood of £4000 a year. In view of this and of the apparently close completion of the universal medical service, the board has decided to take no action. The matter cannot be allowed to drop in this indifferent fashion. If it is physically impossible for the doctors to provide adequate night service, and they, who ought to know, say that it is, then the whole plan should not be shelved either for financial reasons or because some other scheme which will provide no more men to do the physically impossible may be adopted. The board is intimately concerned in this matter; it is the one source to which the doctors can apply for aid, and to which the public can appeal, and instead of curt dismissal it should carry the suggestion a stage further. It certainly has good grounds for refusing *o saddle itself and the ratepayers with some thousands a year, but it could at least demand from the Government, as part of the universal medical service, the necessary finance to make that service complete by an adequate coverage of the night hours. The problem of night attendance, when there are not enough doctors to go round, cannot be left to solve itself; it will not be solved merely by the passage of a bill to regiment doctors; it will still have to be faced, and the board, assured of the co-operation of the profession, should not take the easy course of "waiting for something to turn up." No doctor should be asked to work all day and all night too; a way out has been suggested, and in the interests of the public it should be fully explored.