OVERSEAS VISIT BY DIETITIAN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27036, 11 May 1953, Page 2

OVERSEAS VISIT BY DIETITIAN

MISS M. CAMERON RETURNS IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON HOSPITAL Miss Margaret Cameron. who arrived in Christchurch on Saturday morning after spending four years overseas, was for the last year an assistant dietitian at England’s largest hospital, the London Hospital, Whitechapel, which has 1100 beds. She is a graduate of the Otago School of Home Science, and holds the Health Department’s diploma of hospital diet?ti£s - . She was a dietitian on the staff of the Dunedin Public Hospital before leaving New Zealand, Before going to the London Hospital, Miss Cameron worked for brief periods at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, and at the General Infirmary, Leeds. She then worked for six months in a small London hospital. The diet kitchen and dietetic department at the London Hospital were the most efficient and up-to-date that she had seen anywhere in Britain, said Miss Cameron, in an interview during the week-end. Attached to the diet kitchen there was a special metabolic ward, to which very special cases were admitted: observations during the administration of special diets to these patients aided in diagnostic research. Miss Cameron said the dietetic department, comprising a charge dietitian and four assistants, provided a complete individual tray service for 60 patients, whose progress was watched by the department from their admission until they were seen in the outpatients’ department after their discharge. British hospitals employed catering officers, and dietitians were consequently able to concentrate wholly on therapeutic work. Travels in Europe During her overseas visit, Miss Cameron found time to travel extensively. On the way to Britain, she spent six days in New York, when the Port Phillip, on which she travelled by way of Panama, called there with cargo. In the early summer of 1951, with another New Zealander. Miss Marie Malcolm, of Wellington, Miss Cameron cycled about 3000 miles through Europe in eight weeks. They stayed at youth hostels, and visited Norway, Sweden,Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. At the youth hostels, she said, it was quite common to meet other New Zealanders and Australians. Many of them were hitch-hiking, but she was not so sure that this was a good way of seeing the country, when cars - sometimes travelled at very high speeds. Though she was riding an old-fashioned bicycle, Miss Cameron did not have a puncture on the whole journey. The only mishap occurred when a carrier lent to her rusted through at Brussels. Soon afterwards. Miss Cameron went on a motor trip to France, Switzerland, Germany. Holland and Belgium, but of all of her trips, she said she remembered most her cycle tour. At the Easter holidays in 1950, she visited Switzerland. Italy, and Austria, and spent a week in Paris.

In Britain Miss Cameron travelled extensively. She said that during spring in Devon and Cornwall, the violets and primroses were like a carpet on the ground, and the bluebells were so thick that one could not walk without tramping on them. She was also impressed by the vivid greenness of Ireland and the golden bracken, blue skies and lochs, and the mountains of western Scotland. Ir Scotland, Miss Cameron saw King George VI, Queen Elizabeth! Princess Margaret, and the Duke of Edinburgh picnicking on the Royal shooting grounds near Balmoral. Miss Cameron was present at the first Buckingham Palace garden party of the new Queen’s reign. A daughter of Mr Keith Cameron and Mrs Cameron, M.BJC., of Dunedin, Miss Cameron met two cousins overseas—Dr. C. B. Cameron, pathology registrar at St. George’s Hospital, London, whose father, Major Clive R. Cameron, is with the Imperial War Graves Commission with headquarters in Cairo; and Miss Barbara Cameron, formerly of Dunedin, but now of London. *