Hospitals Advised To Limit Their Demands

Press, Volume C, Issue 29630, 28 September 1961, Page 7

Hospitals Advised To Limit Their Demands

“There are some who too readily blame the Department of Health for the shortage of hospital beds in North Canterbury," says the medical superintendent-in-chief of the North Canterbury Hospital Board (Dr. T. Morton) in his report to the board for the year ended March 31. “The department has been particularly understanding and co-operative with the board, but there is a limit to what demands the economy can meet from hospital boards. “The time has come for us to limit our demands. “If hospitals, their staffs and patients have to face a rough time, they will face it as they have done in the past.” Staph, on Wane Hospital staphylococcal infection is “definitely on the wane,” he adds- He puts this

down to an increasing resistance against infection, the prevention of overcrowding, the abolition of stretchers as far as possible, the availability of more powerful antibiotics, and the admission of septic cases straight into a septic, ward. Zoning

“I should like to see a zoning system introduced, so that all medical cases from the districts neighbouring the Burwood Hospital, and later all surgical cases, would come here,” says the medical superintendent of the hospital (Dr. J. H. Mclntyre). “It would be more convenient than having them travel the six miles to Christchurch Hospital, or the nine miles to the Princess Margaret Hospital.” “Prejudice” Dr. Mclntyre asks for “a more enlightened attitude” towards male nurses from the nursing authorities. “The position of male nurses is very much the same as when prejudice existed against female doctors at the turn of the century,” he says. “Men are just as conscientious as women in carrying out nursing duties, and for certain technical work in operating theatres they, are probably better, and would be more permanent.” Research The director of the fulltime medical unit (Dr. D. W. Beaven) hopes for an early rewriting of the Hospitals Act, 1955, to allow for the support of research in hospitals. This “would correct an an anomalous and anachronistic situation,” he claims.

“Inhuman” Dr. Beaven things that “the present Health Department policy” leading to the “continuing accommodation of the elderly infirm in acute medical wards is inhuman to the patients and grossly uneconomical to the taxpayers.”

Need For X-Rays

Elderly people were most in need of having their chests X-rayed in the present Health Department tuberculosis survey. the North Canterbury Hospital Board was told yesterday by its medical super-intendent-in-chief (Dr. T. Morton). “Often, tuberculosis is confused with ‘smoker’s cough,’ ”he said. “The ferer coughs, spits, and thinks ‘l’ll have to give up cigarettes next year,’ and so tuberculosis goes on growing in his lungs, and is passed on to others,” said Dr. Morton.