Growing Demand For Hospital Beds Noted

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28646, 24 July 1958, Page 10

Growing Demand For Hospital Beds Noted

The demand on hospital beds steadily increased, not only because of the growing population but because more were reaching an advanced age and could no longer be looked after at home, said the Medical Superintendent (Dr. T. Morton) in his annual report to the North Canterbury Hospital Board yesterday.

Patients treated in the Christchurch Hospital last year were 12.539. Deaths were 1042. The hospital beds were 564 and the average daily number of patients was 560, the average stay being 16 days. Operations totalled 7855, compared with 8896 the previous year.

“The average daily number of patients in hospital has diminished particularly owing to our policy to cut down the number of stretchers in surgical wards,” said Dr. Morton. “It is well known that overcrowding in institutions, or indeed in any building, is a potent factor in the spread of bacterial and viral diseases. We have been trying for some time to lessen crossinfection by the penicillinresistant staphylocci, a trying problem in hospitals all over the world today.”. It was difficult so far to point to any lessening of incidence, as no figures of incidence had been carefully taken before cutting down stretcher occupancy in surgical wards, and putting most of one ward over to patients developing infection with the organism, or entering hospital for the treatment of such infections. Patients who had abscesses which needed incision were treated in a room in a ward modified into a simple operation theatre. No Effective Isolation However, so widespread was the resistant staphylococcus throughout the population that effective isolation of all carriers and cases of infection seemed unattainable. It was fortunate that

the vast majority of patients suffered no serious embarrassment from the infection, although it tended to prolong the stay in hospital and caused loss of time from work in those with boils and carbuncles. The rise in incidence and alteration of the virulence of an organism affecting man and other animals was no new thing and was evident before the introduction of antibiotics, said Dr. Morton. He had seen many people from the Kentish hopfields afflicted with so mild a type of smallpox that some claimed they would rather suffer it than vaccination. A significant figure in the hospital records was the number of patients who died within 24 hours of admission. An examination in detail should be an interesting study. There was little doubt that the figure expressed, to some extent, the reluctance of some families to allow old folk to die at home. The noticeable drop in the' number of operations was almost entirely due to cutting down stretchers, said Dr. Morton.