ADMISSIONS TO HOSPITAL

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27225, 17 December 1953, Page 5

ADMISSIONS TO HOSPITAL

PROCEDURE TO BE REVIEWED

COMMITTEE TO STUDY NURSES’ TRAINING

Because of doubts expressed publicly about the method of entry of patients to hospital, and acting on the recommendation of the medical superintendent of the Christchurch Hospital (Dr. T. Morton), the hospital committee of the North Canterbury Hospital Board has appointed a subcommittee to investigate the admission qf patients and the hospital waiting list. This was reported to the board yesterday. Ultimate plans for the Burwood Hospital provide for its becoming a general hospital, with an A grade training school attached. The hospital committee reported yesterday that it had further considered, the development of the hospital aniT that it recommended the general hospital plan.

Burwood’s position in relation to the board’s other institutions should in the meantime become part of the order of reference for the sub-com-mittee set up to deal with hospital admissions generally, the report said. Staffing at Burwood

Miss M. B. Howard said that the board should give special attention to the staffing position at Burwood Hospital. “We’re building a new wing there, but we can’t staff the present building adequately,” she said. The chairman (Mr V. C. Lawn) said the hospital committee was well aware of the position. “The girls just aren’t available,” he added.

Although the Director-General of Health (Dr. J. Cairney) had recommended that the planned lounge space in the proposed nurses’ home at Burwood Hospital should be reduced, the hospital committee recommended that no such modification, to the present plans should be made. The estimate for the building was £11,500. Strong recommendations that the first stage in the construction of the Cashmere Hospital should be an A grade nursing training school and that provision be made for a school building in stage one of the construction were made by the hospital committee. The committee had given “serious consideration to the question of nursing school facilities and the effect of such a measure upon the staffing of the institution,”* said the committee’s report.

Progress on the first stage of the Cashmere Hospital had been “very good, the daily number of men employed being 71,” said the building committee’s report. Work would cease on December 23, and resume on January 12.