New Pediatric Unit A Great Advance”

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29841, 6 June 1962, Page 10

New Pediatric Unit A Great Advance”

Proposals for the new pediatric unit of the North Canterbury Hospital Board are a great advance on existing facilities for child patients, according to the secretary of the North Canterbury Hospital Board (Mr J. G. Laurenson). The unit is planned to occupy two wards in the new vying at Princess Margaret Hospital, but the extension of the hospital has been held up pending research into bed needs by a new Health Department committee. . The wards will be the same size as other wards taking 30 adult patients. It should be possible to accommodate more than 60 children comfortably in the wards, however, as the cots or bassinets for smaller children take up much less room than a bed. The largest number of patients in the present children's ward (Ward 9> at Christchurch Hospital was 110 and the average is between 70 and 80.

The present flow of children through the children's ward is at the rate of more than 3000 a year—between a quarter and a third of the total admissions to Christchurch Hospital. Space For Mothers

The plans for the new unit include living-in accommodation for mothers of young babies. At present keeping the necessary regular feeding hours is often extremely inconvenient to mothers, especially if they live at any distance from the hospital. When not required by breast-feeding mothers, this accommodation will be available to mothers of other children, as the recent extension of visitinghours in Ward 9 to allow parents to attend their children during a great part of the day has been an unqualified success.

The largest rooms in the new unit will each have space for four beds, with correspondingly larger numbers of cots or bassinets. A few double and several single rooms will also be provided, the single rooms including four set aside specially for isolation cases. The lack of single rooms in Ward 9 means that children with infectious' diseases have to be housed in single rooms in other wards; it also means that there is nowhere private to put a distressed or very ill child. The intention is that the new unit will take all child patients except

those requiring plastic surgery. They will continue ‘o be treated in the plastic surgery unit at Burwood Hospital. The medical and nursing staff will especially welcome the provision of special rooms for interview and for treatment, as well as offices for the staff. Now children often have to be treated in full view of the rest of the ward or in the sterilising room, while interviews and examinations must be carried out in the ward or in a lobby from which several service rooms lead off. Two solaria in the new unit will provide plenty of space for recreation and will also house the school and pre-school classes conducted by teachers supplied by the Canterbury Education Board and the hospital board’s nursery supervisor. The only recreation space in Ward 9 is a small area in the middle of the ward, which in peak times is occupied by beds. School classes often have to be conducted at bedsides because the centre space is needed by the younger children.