NO RESPONSE TO APPEAL

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29382, 8 December 1960, Page 18

NO RESPONSE TO APPEAL

Rural Hospital Staffing

This Christmas looks like being cheerless for Canterbury’s country hospitals. Not one applicant has responded to the urgent appeal of the chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board. Dr. L. C L. Averill, for staff to fill the hospitals’ many vacancies, and the institutions committee of the board may be forced to recommend that many of the hospitals must close. The final decision will rest with the full board, which meets on December 21. The crisis could come even before then in some of the hospitals. According to the secretary of the board, Mr J. G. Laurenson, many of the few existing staff members are working near breaking-point, and, in his words, “if they have breakdowns, their hospitals will have to close willy-nilly.” At four of the hospitals, matrons are working single-handed where there should be staffs of two or three, while the Kaikoura Hospital is struggling on with three staff members where there should be eight. The greatest difficulty in recruitment is that even ordinarily fully-qualified nursing sisters are not always suitable for country positions. Maternity cases are so predominant among the patients that nurses for these hospitals must have midwifery or maternity qualifications, or alternatively must be registered midwives or maternity nurses.